Hello everybody,

I have an HP Elitebook that's currently running Fedora 37 and I want to make the switch to Ubuntu. So, I downloaded the ISO and mounted it on my USB, but when I boot the laptop and select the install Ubuntu option I keep getting this error:"end Kernel panic - not syncing: no working init found. Try passing init = option to kernel."


Does anyone have any idea why it's caused and how can I solve it?

Thanks!

Hi,

how did you copy the iso to the usb? Some tools mess up the hybrid style iso that is used by Ubuntu (and Debian). A simple cp is probably the easiest way that will preserve the iso. Make sure the usb stick is *not* mounted then copy. Eg if your usb stick is /dev/sdX:
Evo2.

Apparently the USB boots ok - might be a dodgy download. Ubuntu have a link on the download page for a sha256 checksum to verify that iso.

Hi, I used the Fedora disk mount tool and also Rufus, same result with both, I'm about to try with the method you suggested, thanks!

Hi, I checked the quality of the ISO and apparently everything's okay with it!

Just tried this and still getting the same error :/

Hi,

I've seen this sort of behaviour before..

See post 42 of https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...610/page3.html .

Hope that this helps..

B.

Additionally (to post #7) exactly what did you try?

I've tried formatting the USB with the Windows tool, the Fedora tool, Rufus and ElenaBatcher, I've used both NTFS and FAT32 for the install and I'm still getting the same error.

This is not the exact description, but anyway it looks like you formatted the usb stick and put the iso as a file onto that filesystem. Or something similar.
For the iso file you need not format that pendrive at all.
probably this helps: https://trendoceans.com/how-to-creat...distributions/

Without the usb plugged in at power-on If you go into the bios boot menu by pressing f9 is there a ubuntu boot option and does it boot?

This sounds like for some reason it can not start the root filesystem from the initrd.

Have you tried a different USB port? USB2/3 compatibility can be funky when booting from a device. Try matching the port type to the device type if you can.

What's more important than the line you posted is what comes before it. If you don't feel like typing it all in, take a camera and take a snapshot. Something there should tell us why that rootfs can not be mounted.

I've booted a distribution from USB using many methods:
- writing using dd
- writing using cat
- and for older systems that have trouble for some reason manually partitioning and formatting the stick and copying the files over

Given that there's no hardware issue or problem with the downloaded image, any one of those methods will successfully boot.