Ubuntu 9.04 dropping you to an initramfs shell at startup

After successfully installing the recently released Ubuntu 9.04 a.k.a. Jaunty Jackalope on my own PC, I decided to install it on the families’ PC in my house. On that PC starting Ubuntu didn’t work however, because I got dropped to an initramfs shell after seeing the splash screen for a while. I used the Desktop CD, copied to a USB flash drive. The PC on which I wanted to install 9.04 already had 8.04 running, which didn’t have this problem during it’s installation.

A bit of searching on the Ubuntu forums quickly learned me that I was not the only one being affected by this rather serious bug. There are one, two, three, four, five topics covering the subject, with the last one being created a year ago and spanning 39 pages, because the problem apparently already manifested itself in earlier releases as well. I tried a few solutions mentioned in those topics, but none has worked. Two bug reports are mentioned to be possibly related to the issue, bug #290153 and bug #47768. I’m rather disappointed this bug slipped through Ubuntu’s quality control, but it’s doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Quite a few bug reports I filed after the call to test the Kubuntu 9.04 release candidate still are unanswered at this moment, and so have some of my bug reports filed for previous releases. I hope new CD images will be released once this bug is fixed, at least that it is fixed in the next release, 9.10. It’s annoying, but I’m not in a hurry to install the latest Ubuntu version on our families’ PC anyway.

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