Ubuntu
ubiquity package

Installation stuck at black screen

Asked by Lucas Nilsson

I have a HP EliteBook 850 G8 with an i5 Intel, 16gb RAM and 256gb storage.

My problem is that I cannot install Ubuntu, and I have a theory that it might be a problem with Ubiquity. I boot into GRUB just fine and choose one of the "Install Ubuntu"-options and then there is just a black screen and the computer stays frozen in that state.
I would expect the installation would start and Ubuntu to be installed.

Things I have tried:
- Different GRUB command line options, such as "set gfxmode=800x600", "set gfxpayload=text" and adding "nomodeset" and "dis_ucode_ldr" to kernel params. No improvement.

- Plug in an external monitor. No improvement.

- Installing different Ubuntu versions; 18.04, 20.04 and 22.04 (beta).No improvement. NOTE: 22.04 also prints "Error: Out of memory" before freezing, not sure if related...

- Installing Arch-based distros (Garuda Linux, Arch Linux) that is not using Ubiquity. They work just fine, no problems what so ever.
- Installing Lubuntu, which uses the Calamares installer if I'm not mistaken, and that also worked fine.

All of the above is performed with the same USB stick, so the USB should be fine since I can install other OS with it, right?

My question then; is it feasible to assume that the problem lies with the combination Ubiquity + "HP EliteBook 850 G8" and is there are possible fix for this and if not; do anyone here have any advise on how to debug this further?

BR,
Lucas

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Lucas Nilsson
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Revision history for this message
Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#1

Does the option "Try Ubuntu without installing" work?
Do you have UEFI secure boot enabled or disabled?

Revision history for this message
Lucas Nilsson (lnilss43) said (last edit ): 		#2

Actually, I don't see the "Try Ubuntu without installing" option at all in the GRUB menu (this is from 20.04).
I only see:

> Ubuntu
> Ubuntu (safe graphics)
> OEM install (for manufactueres)
> Boot from next volume
> UEFI firmware Settings

"Secure boot" is disabled, as well as "fast boot" option.

Revision history for this message
Bernard Stafford (bernard010) said : 		#3

You may have a corrupted download.
Verify your download.
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/how-to-verify-ubuntu#1-overview
-or-
Etcher / Validates the checksum automatically, works with any OS.
https://www.balena.io/etcher/

Revision history for this message
Lucas Nilsson (lnilss43) said : 		#4

Thank you for the tip, however...

The download is verified (according to the instructions) and the flashed USB is valid (according to Balena Etcher).
I also tried a different USB, same result e.i. black screen and no output after GRUB menu.

Revision history for this message
Bernard Stafford (bernard010) said (last edit ): 		#5

Did you wait 4 to 10 minutes for the Try Ubuntu / Install Ubuntu page opens.
Some times just as long to propagate files before the installer starts.
This is depending on your computer processor/ram.
https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS has been released.

Revision history for this message
Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#6

There is a known problem listed in the Ubuntu 22.04 release notes https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-notes/24668

The Ubuntu Desktop images can be slow to boot (taking up to 10 minutes) when booted from a USB drive on a BIOS system. The issue is being investigated, however once the system is installed this is not an issue.

Revision history for this message
Lucas Nilsson (lnilss43) said : 		#7

I haven't been timing the wait but I'm pretty sure I have waited more than 10 minutes, at least for some of the older releases (20.04, probably).

I just now downloaded, verified and flashed (with Balena) the 22.04 LTS release, i.e. not the beta, and now I get a kernel panic instead:

> Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

After some searching and testing I found that when manually booting from GRUB command line I am able to load the kernel fine but I get an "Error: out of memory" when trying to load the initrd. I feel like this could have something to do with my problems.

I will investigate further to see if there is some BIOS setting that might limit the RAM during boot...

But I feel like this might not be an issue with Ubiquity but rather with my BIOS setup and that Ubuntu ships with a bigger initrd image than the other distros I've tried.

Thank you for you patience and help!

/Lucas

Revision history for this message
Scott Buchanan (inthebrilliantblue) said : 		#8

So I have this problem on my Area 51m laptop. Specs: i9 9900, 128GB ram, /boot partition is 2GB. Laptop is set to UEFI boot only, with secure boot disabled.

I did a do-release-upgrade -d to upgrade from 21.10 to 22.04, which ran to completion. Upon rebooting, it tries to load the 5.15.0-25-generic initrd.img. I get Loading initial ramdisk... error: out of memory. I then load a live cd of 22.04 desktop onto a usb drive to boot to, and get the same error message. I then try 21.10 desktop on same usb drive and then I can boot into the live cd.

I mount my /boot partition to see how big the initrd.img files are, and see that 5.15.0-25-generic is 121MB, which should be fine? I have other systems with bigger img files because of weird drivers and hardware, but on this laptop it seems to have issues with it. I manage to mount and chroot into my main install partitions and changed compression to xz, and changed modules from most to dep, and it still couldnt load after running initramfs-tools -u -k all, which reduced the img file to 92MB. HOWEVER, I could then boot from the older kernel 5.13.0-40-generic, though I did not have network drivers running for whatever reason. This img file was 68MB.

After getting into the 5.13.0-40-generic boot, I changed from using the Nvidia 510 driver to using the nouveau driver to further reduce the img size. After doing that, the img file for 5.15 sits at 74MB. Which now also boots.

So my question is, is there some sort of weird initramfs config file that is limiting the ram disk size? If I generate a initrd.img file bigger than 80MB then I cant boot.

I have other machines that are either equal in specs or bigger with 22.04 on them and they have bigger initrd.img files that still boot. So why this laptop?

Revision history for this message
Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#9

I suggest running memtest