Casper's USB update-initramfs shim should look for initrd.img in /boot

This bug was fixed in the package casper - 1.237

---------------
casper (1.237) maverick; urgency=low

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Add btrfs support.
  * Make ip=* command-line parsing more precise (thanks, Bill Nickless;
    LP: #586553).
  * Make the USB update-initramfs shim cope with vmlinuz and initrd.img
    being in /boot rather than / (LP: #591207).
  * Depend on file for /etc/init.d/casper (thanks, Alon Swartz;
    LP: #591213).
  * Conflict with live-initramfs, as they overlap and people can pick one or
    the other (LP: #453476).

  [ Martin Pitt ]
  * debian/casper.init: Change shutdown splash message to refer to
    "installation media" instead of "disc"; a lot of installs happen
    from USB sticks these days. Thanks to Debbie Beliveau for the idea.
 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:53:17 +0100

Accepted casper into lucid-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Any testers?

I booted a lucid final live system from a USB stick with 128 MB of persistency, and "sudo update-initramfs -u" fails.

However, after upgrading to the proposed version it still fails:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install casper
The following packages will be upgraded:
  casper
[...]
Preparing to replace casper 1.236 (using .../casper_1.236.1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement casper ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
Setting up casper (1.236.1) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
cp: cannot stat `/vmlinuz': No such file or directory

Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic
cp: cannot stat `/vmlinuz': No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing initramfs-tools (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 initramfs-tools
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

This is exactly the same error message as with the lucid-final version.

There is no /casper/, but /proc/mounts has those:

rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /cdrom vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/loop0 /rofs squashfs ro,noatime 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /casper-rw-backing vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/loop1 /cow ext3 rw,noatime,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0
aufs / aufs rw,noatime,si=f17d5e79cd286719 0 0

Interesting, I recreated my USB stick with the current 10.04.1 candidate iso now (which already has the lucid-proposed version), and now I get:

$ sudo update-initramfs -u
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-24-generic
lzma: Encoder error: -2147467259

I'll attach the complete log with -v, but it doesn't give away much more info.

Adding -x to /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/casper-bottom/43disable_updateinitramfs gives:

$ sudo update-initramfs -u -v
[...]
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-24-generic
[...]
Calling hook kbd
Adding binary /bin/setfont
Adding binary /bin/kbd_mode
Adding binary /bin/loadkeys
Calling hook dmsetup
+ PREREQ=
+ DESCRIPTION=Possibly disabling update-initramfs (useless on a live CD)...
+ prereqs
+ echo
+ exit 0
Building cpio /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-24-generic.new initramfs
lzma: Encoder error: -2147467259

Looking at the USB stick, I see that the original intent of this patch seems to have worked, it indeed tries to update the USB stick now, but fails in the middle due to that lzma failure:

$ ls -l /media/035E-3183/casper/init*
-rw-r--r-- 1 martin martin 9837789 2010-08-16 07:47 /media/035E-3183/casper/initrd.lz
-rw-r--r-- 1 martin martin 413696 2010-08-16 06:03 /media/035E-3183/casper/initrd.lz.new

After discussion with Steve I removed the SRU from -proposed, to unblock 10.04.1 images. The SRU doesn't help the actual problem (upgrades fail), and it now leaves a broken file on USB sticks (which takes additional space and might lead to other problems).

Thanks for working on this, guys. I think it's OK if we miss 10.4.1 for
this fix, better to do it properly. I would ask though that we address
it for 10.4.2 and also make it part of the testing routine for future
releases (i.e. we commit to making the live USB install image updateable).

Mark

For your interest, there are two other bugs that prevent live USB installs from being updateable:

- Bug #667578 where update-grub dies on live systems
- Bug #562312 in which Startup Disk Creator does not leave space for initrd updates

Both lead to apt being in a conflict state and make Ubuntu Software Center stop working.

I've identified two problems with my previous upload attempt of casper, and am preparing an upload now which does a better job. It probably won't be possible to fix this in all upgrade scenarios, because it'll be possible for somebody to do a partial upgrade of the kernel without the new version of casper, but this upload will remove the necessity to generate a new USB stick before the new update-initramfs takes effect.

Martin, your problem is bug 562312, also mentioned by nh2. For the purposes of validating this SRU, I think that we should work around this by ensuring that the usb-creator slider is somewhere in the middle and the stick is a reasonably comfortable size; not to say that that bug shouldn't be fixed, but it shouldn't block this one in my opinion.

As far as I can tell, bug 667578 does not affect lucid, but only maverick and up. I'm not seeing it in my test environment, although I am seeing bug 591202 when upgrading the grub-pc package itself.

This bug was fixed in the package casper - 1.254

---------------
casper (1.254) natty; urgency=low

  * More fixes to the USB update-initramfs shim (LP: #591207):
    - Make the shim a proper executable in
      /usr/share/casper/casper-update-initramfs and symlink to it if
      necessary at boot time, so that new versions of this shim are
      automatically installed when casper is upgraded.
    - $bootdir/initrd.img may exist when $bootdir/vmlinuz doesn't; for
      example, if we're running off a fresh live USB stick and the kernel
      hasn't yet been upgraded.
 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:18:59 +0000

Accepted casper into lucid-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Accepted casper into maverick-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

This bug was fixed in the package casper - 1.236.2

---------------
casper (1.236.2) lucid-proposed; urgency=low

  * More fixes to the USB update-initramfs shim (thanks, Evan Dandrea;
    LP: #557023, #591207):
    - Make the shim a proper executable in
      /usr/share/casper/casper-update-initramfs and symlink to it if
      necessary at boot time, so that new versions of this shim are
      automatically installed when casper is upgraded.
    - Only copy each of $bootdir/initrd.img and $bootdir/vmlinuz if they
      exist (for example, initrd.img may exist without vmlinuz if we're
      running off a fresh live USB stick and the kernel hasn't yet been
      upgraded).
 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:26:57 +0000

This bug was fixed in the package casper - 1.248.1

---------------
casper (1.248.1) maverick-proposed; urgency=low

  * More fixes to the USB update-initramfs shim (thanks, Evan Dandrea;
    LP: #557023, #591207):
    - Make the shim a proper executable in
      /usr/share/casper/casper-update-initramfs and symlink to it if
      necessary at boot time, so that new versions of this shim are
      automatically installed when casper is upgraded.
    - Only copy each of $bootdir/initrd.img and $bootdir/vmlinuz if they
      exist (for example, initrd.img may exist without vmlinuz if we're
      running off a fresh live USB stick and the kernel hasn't yet been
      upgraded).
 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:34:15 +0000

I am still having this problem with a 12.04 live USB install. I installed a basic system to a USB drive and whenever it tries to update the kernel, dpkg gives errors.