[Bug 1876562] Re: Upgrade to 20.04 LTS errors - mkinitramfs failure cpio

Sat May 9 16:46:46 UTC 2020

That error message does not mean an unbootable system, fortunately, in
most cases.

I just upgraded from Bionic Beaver (18.04 LTS) to Focal Fossa (20.04
LTS) today, and yes, it is a free space thing, specifically in /boot.
The above link worked for me.  The problem seems to be with systems that
were originally installed with a smaller /boot partition, per some
advice we were given for security reasons some years ago.  Many of us
still make a smaller /boot partition for this reason, especially on
servers.  It also is a good way to LUKS-encrypt / for security and still
be able to boot the box (I think /boot still needs to be unencrypted).
In my case, /boot was 256 MB in size.  In the past, I would keep the
current running kernel and the previous kernel and apt-purge (or through
Synaptic, get rid of) the older ones.  Before any subsequent kernel
upgrade, I'd delete the oldest one, thus leaving one kernel (the running
one), and thus there'd be no problem with space on /boot.

The problem is that kernel binaries, and especially their initrds, have
been getting bigger as the years have gone on, and now with the new
5.4.0 kernel, we've kinda hit critical mass.  Therefore, whatever script
or other program does space-checking to see if there's enough apparently
has a "cushion" built into its check so that even if there's enough, it
throws an error if space is kinda close.  This can happen when you have
two kernels on the system when /boot is 256MB or so.  That condition
happens at the end of the upgrade during initrd generation, because I
now had both 4.15.0-99 and the new 5.4.0-29 kernel; I was now down to
84% on /boot, and the error popped up.

Fortunately, since in the case of a 256MB partition and this upgrade,
there *is* actually sufficient space, we get a bootable system.  First,
check to see that there's a 5.4.0-29 initrd first!  If there is--and
there should be--then go right ahead and reboot; you'll be fine.  That's
what I did.

After rebooting and thus verifying that 5.4.0-29 and the rest of the
system is A-OK (it is), then go ahead and apt-purge the 4.15.0-99
kernel.  I'd also recommend getting rid of linux-headers, linux-modules,
and linux-modules-extra (all for 4.15.0-99, of course).  This way you
not only free up space on /, you also make sure to get rid of the
System-map file in /boot for 4.15.0-99.

Hopefully this helps clear things up some more.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1876562

Title:
  Upgrade to 20.04 LTS errors - mkinitramfs failure cpio

Status in initramfs-tools package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  At the end of the upgrade process to 20.04 I got a message about
  mkinitramfs. It said I should consider submitting a bug.

  Now after a re-boot I get:

  $ sudo apt install -f
  Reading package lists... Done
  Building dependency tree       
  Reading state information... Done
  0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
  1 not fully installed or removed.
  After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
  Setting up initramfs-tools (0.136ubuntu6) ...
  update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
  Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.136ubuntu6) ...
  update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-28-generic
  Error 24 : Write error : cannot write compressed block 
  E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 lz4 -9 -l 24
  update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-28-generic with 1.
  dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
   installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned erro
  r exit status 1
  Errors were encountered while processing:
   initramfs-tools
  E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

  $ lsb_release -rd
  Description:	Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
  Release:	20.04

  $ apt-cache policy initramfs-tools
  initramfs-tools:
    Installed: 0.136ubuntu6
    Candidate: 0.136ubuntu6
    Version table:
   *** 0.136ubuntu6 500
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main i386 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
  Package: initramfs-tools 0.136ubuntu6
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-28.32-generic 5.4.30
  Uname: Linux 5.4.0-28-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
  CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
  Date: Sun May  3 02:11:32 2020
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-11-16 (1994 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140722.2)
  PackageArchitecture: all
  SourcePackage: initramfs-tools
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-05-03 (0 days ago)

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