[Bug 1931024] Re: BOOT fails on UEFI with 100MB initrd.img [Dell XPS 9550]

[Benjamin Drung]

I am marking this bug as fixed. The initrd with MODULES=most is 15 MB on
Ubuntu 24.04. This is due to

initramfs-tools (0.142ubuntu23) noble; urgency=medium

  [ Daniel van Vugt ]
  * hooks/framebuffer: Only add simple/tiny framebuffer drivers. This is to
    limit the size of initrd when FRAMEBUFFER=y is soon enabled for desktop
    installations (LP: #1970069, #1869655).

initramfs-tools (0.142ubuntu8) mantic; urgency=medium

  [ Benjamin Drung ]
  * mkinitramfs:
    - Put compressed kernel modules and firmware files in an uncompressed cpio
      (LP: #2028567)

Please re-open in case you still have problems on Ubuntu 24.04.

** Changed in: initramfs-tools (Ubuntu)
       Status: Confirmed => Fix Released

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to initramfs-tools in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1931024

Title:
  BOOT fails on UEFI with 100MB initrd.img [Dell XPS 9550]

Status in initramfs-tools package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  I've been working with a user for the last 2 days on a failure to even
  start the kernel when installing 20.04 or 21.04 (possibly other
  releases) with a UEFI boot.

  System is Dell XPS 9550 amd64 with Ubuntu Budgie.

  The symptom is that after GRUB successfully loads the kernel into RAM,
  it fails to return from loading the initrd into RAM. This was proved
  by adding guard 'echo' and 'sleep' around each stage n grub.cfg.

  After much investigation since this seemed initially related to a LUKS
  install I noticed the initrd.img files generated with MODULES=most are
  105MB. Most of that is unneeded firmware and other files so I changed
  to MODULES=dep. Resulting initrd.img's are around 55MB.

  System then boots correctly.

  This looks like a possible issue with the UEFI on these XPS models but
  as initrd.img sizes get ridiculously large this is likely to hit more
  systems and users.

  For several years I carry optimisation patches to initramfs-tools that
  don't add most firmwares except those specifically required (certainly
  not adding AMD GPU firmware when system has only Intel or Nvidia GPUs
  - and visa versa)

  My initrd.img's are a hybrid of MODULES=dep and result in less than
  20MB.

  My recommendation is to add optimisations to initramfs-tools or adopt
  MODULES=dep.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/initramfs-tools/+bug/1931024/+subscriptions