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I have a dual boot Win7Pro/Ubuntu on an HP Probook 6550b. Everything worked fine until I did an upgrade to 16.04.

When trying to boot in Ubuntu I get this message :

BusyBox v1.21.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.21.0-1ubuntu1) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands
(initramfs)

I read somewhere on this forum that it could be caused by a bad filesystem, so I tried this:

sudo fdisk -l | grep Linux | grep -Ev 'swap'

But sudo fdisk -l gives this:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8c949010

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      616447      307200    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          616448   589486079   294434816    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       589486080   620943359    15728640    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       620943360   625127423     2092032    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

So, no Linux filesystem. I remembered Linux was installed from out of Windows, long time ago, something with wubi, see screenshot

Wubi screenshot

So, I cannot use this solution ? Boot drops to a (initramfs) prompts/busybox

Community
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bart
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  • Are you able to get to a GRUB menu and try to select your prior kernel and see if it boots? WUBI installs aren't support any more, so I don't know if upgrades have problems. You might search askubuntu for "wubi" and see what hits you get. – heynnema Aug 13 '16 at 23:18
  • Possible duplicate of this "serious" error which also drops sometimes to a busybox. – ngng Aug 13 '16 at 23:24
  • @heynnema I use a window boot manager, I select Ubuntu and than I get the busybox prompt – bart Aug 14 '16 at 07:23
  • @ngng I don't think it has anything to do with a Wubi problem, I have been using this setup for many years without touching, it is only after upgrading I can't use Ubuntu anymore – bart Aug 14 '16 at 07:26
  • Ok, I made a little progress, from windows boot-manager I can select Ubuntu and from there go to grub (didn't know how to do it ...by keeping shift while booting...) , then I could select older kernel and it boots ! Maybe better make a backup and make an install without Wubi .... – bart Aug 14 '16 at 10:51
  • @bart As far as I know the problem from here still exists with 16.04. Probably, you patched it for 14.04 but your patch could be overwritten during the upgrade. I read you solved your problem. Can you write your solution to help other user? Thank you. – ngng Aug 14 '16 at 17:05

2 Answers2

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As we discussed... get into the GRUB menu by holding down the LEFT SHIFT key immediately after selecting Ubuntu from the Windows boot manager. Then select the prior kernel and see if it boots. If yes, do some backups! Then try the 16.04 upgrade again (with Wubi, if you like). If that fails again, just do a standard Ubuntu reinstall/upgrade using a Ubuntu LiveCD that you've burned to a DVD. Cheers, Al

heynnema
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  • problem solved thanks to all of you for helping me out !!! – bart Aug 14 '16 at 15:45
  • Glad you got it going! Please vote or accept my answer if you can. Cheers, Al – heynnema Aug 14 '16 at 16:12
  • ok, did that ! big relief for me.... and now a good lesson to backup before updating....almost had a heart attack when thinking about losing 4 months of work .... – bart Aug 14 '16 at 18:26
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I had same issue after upgrading (from Ubuntu udate manager) from Ubuntu 14.10 to Ubuntu 16.04.1. It worked fine, until rebooted.... The recovery menu and every option would go to busybox. So I booted into a live CD and ran sudo fsck /dev/sda1 from a terminal (with the HD in question NOT mounted) since that was the msg from busybox about sda1 needing manual fsck. But not sure for other busybox messages

Ronald Gaynor
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