[Wolves] Ubuntu CDs - Init not found

[Andy Jewell]

Hi Claire,

At the risk of being accused of teaching your grandmother to suck eggs...

Have you tried MemTest86 on it? It could just be dodgy RAM.

I built a new machine for my wife a few weeks ago, and one of the RAM DIMMS failed during the install of Ubuntu 10.04 - quite spectacular really: the installer went schizophrenic and started reporting all sorts of strange errors. Once I'd identified and removed the duff DIMM, it went fine...

No Init Found suggests to me that there was a problem with the kernel recognising your CD -  the BIOS is used to do the initial load stage, but once the kernel is booted, it takes over. Once the kernel is loaded it boots from pre-loaded RAM disk to load up all the required hardware drivers; when that's done, it mounts the root file-system and loads Init. Anything that goes wrong with that drivers stage can cause it not to be able to find Init. I've seen similar errors with loads of distros on weird hardware over the last decade.

A few more things to try:

1. noapic and noacpi kernel settings (have to use Alt install CD)
2. Check your CDROM drive settings - If it's IDE, is it on the same channel as the HDD? Is it set to Cable Select or Master/Slave? If CS, what position is it on the cable? Middle connector is usually the SLAVE position.
4. If you have one, install a spare old hard disk instead of the current one.
5. Update the BIOS - if there's a newer one available

Andy D'Arcy Jewell
SysMicro Linux Support

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