after two days of great 16.10 I boot up and now get ths error message

[reb81]

Kubuntu upgraded great and easy. two days later I get this error. message.

_______________________________

[ 3.629145] scsi host2: runtime PM trying to activate child device host2 but parent (1-4.2:1.0) is not
active
BusyBox V1.22.1 (ubuntu 1:1.22.0-19ubuntu2) built in shell (ash)
Enter “ help” for a list pf built-in commands.
(initramfs)
_______________________________

What does it mean and how can I correct it? I am sendjng this from the Laptop because I cannot get into Kubuntu in my desktop.
Please help and Thanks for any advice or help.
Dick Barmann

[sasha]

These seem to be relevant bug reports:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...x/+bug/1631058
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153171

No one mentioned it there and it might be silly, but do you have any plugged in USB drives.

As this seems to be kernel bug and things worked before for you, maybe booting with older kernel will work.
Hold SHIFT during boot, right after POST screen, but before kubuntu logo and you should get screen that lets you boot with previous kernel.

[GreyGeek]

That's not a Kubuntu error, it probably is a problem of BusyBox, a single app replacement for lots of Linux utilities, and it is apparently a rather new bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...8?comments=all

About a year ago a commit was made by Denys Vlasenko to BusyBox, and passed unremarked on the Busybox mailing lists. Judging from the diffs, failure of system log integration is the most obvious consequence of the change to systemd by most distros.

My guess is that BusyBox deleted parts of systemd, which Kubuntu has depended on since 15.10, and you were unlucky enough to get hit by it. Your experience should be a caution to others to not install BusyBox or remove it ASAP. Several reports are from people who first experienced it while using a USB stick, but I'm not convinced that the Linux kernel or the USB stick had anything to do with it. When did you install BusyBox?

Here is the experience of an Ubuntu 14.04 user who tried valiantly for two weeks to recover his installation but was forced to give up. His wasn't a systemd error but a BusyBox problem and he finally surrendered with this message:

Well, the latest update is that I decided to pull the pin on this hard drive and wipe it completely. Even Darik's Boot and Nuke is laughing at me (it won't wipe it). I tried re-partitioning it in the gparted that works in the Debian LiveCD (gparted in the other distros won't 'see' the drive) and it pretends to work but then barfs at me when I try to install a fresh OS on it. It annoys me a bit in a way because I still don't know what originally caused this drive to go la-la cookoo on me and some of the self diagnostics that run on it say it's an ok drive? I'm pretty sure the MBR, the Grub and the Linux Pixies have all been having unprotected hex. I just wish I could wipe the damn thing and start again before I go full-on kamakazi suicide mode and attack it with a hammer and chisel. (I'd probably miss)

He was given the appropriate dd command and successfuly re-installed Ubuntu 14.04.
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M
which I would change to
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=10M
or even "bs=32M", which would still take about 10-15 hours or more to zero out a 500GB HD

Then you can do a fresh install.

Another lesson events like this teach is the three laws of computer use: 1 backup, 2 backup and 3 backup.
When I taught my clients how to back up a question I was often asked was "how often should we back up?". My answer was always "How much do you want to manually re-enter?". The real question wasn't if they'd do an incremental backup every night and a whole system backup on Saturday. It was if they'd do an incremental backup during the noon lunch break.

For personal computer users like me, I always keep my important data backed up to two different external HDs, and three USB sticks, one of which is always in the watch pocket of my pants, along with a persistent LiveCD of Kubuntu 16.04.1.

[reb81]

I did have a usb drive plugged in. I do not know what BusyBox is. I did not install anything after the upgrade.
Dick Barmann

[GreyGeek]

I did have a usb drive plugged in. I do not know what BusyBox is. I did not install anything after the upgrade.
Dick Barmann

That's disconcerting. What were you doing, or had been doing, with the USB stick at the time?

My initial thought was the Linux was full of utility command. Why would anyone install BusyBox?

I noticed that the kernel regression report to Linus Torvalds mentioned:

Desc: scsi host6: runtime PM trying to activate child device host6 but parent (2-2:1.0) is not
active
Repo: 2016-08-15 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153171
Stat: 2016-09-14 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153171#c5
Note: "patch available; mkp ""I would like the change to get a bit of soak time before we backport it."""

which is what your problem is.

While many mentioned scsi hosts I asked about USB sticks because I also noticed what sasha noticed in the reports: many said that they had USB sticks plugged in. But, lots of people are using USB sticks with no problem. And, to my knowledge BusyBox wasn't part of the default install. So, I assumed you had installed it.

If you didn't install BusyBox then it must have been part of the default install, so I looked at the repository with Muon to see if busybox was listed. It was. BusyBox itself was not installed on my 16.04.1 system, but other TWO parts of BusyBox were:
busybox-initramfs
busybox-static

On my system BOTH were marked installed, and I never installed them. I noticed that busybox-static was upgraded to 1.22.0-15ubuntu1 on 9/7/16.

I checked about uninstalling them and doing so will take out "ubuntu-standard" as well, which is important:

This package depends on all of the packages in the Ubuntu standard system. This set of packages provides a comfortable command-line Unix-like environment.

It is also used to help ensure proper upgrades, so it is recommended that it not be removed

While it is possible to remove the two busybox apps without removing ubuntu-standard using dpkg commands, I don't know what uses ubuntu-standard has for the two busybox apps and removing them might break a working installation. This "solution" also assums that BusyBox is the problem, which was my initial assumption. On reconsideration some malfunction may have caused a corruption to your HD.

Some things you might try is to boot the system with a LiveUSB stick and then open a Konsole and issue
sudo fsck /dev/sda
assuming that the HD is sda and your LiveUSB is sdb or something other than sda.
sudo fdisk -l
will show you what is what. Just ignore the /dev/ram0 to /dev/ram15 stuff.
When fsck is done log off the LiveUSB, pull out the USB stick and reboot the system.

There are other things to try later.

[Snowhog]

In the OPs case, I think the BusyBox is the result of a failed boot -- a kernel panic -- dropping you to a minimal Grub prompt.

[reb81]

I had just got this PC after mine had aged and would freeze or crash. I had built it years ago with a knowledgeable friend. the seller installed Kubuntu 16.04 and Windows8. I had all my data on a thumb drive from the old one and after updating to 16.10 I was going to sift through my Data and install it in the new Kubuntu. I have Kubuntu16.10 , Ubuntu 16.10, and Windows8 on this PC. What can I do to tell what is on which partition so that you or someone can lead me to a solution.
Dick Barmann

[Snowhog]

Boot into Ubuntu 16.10 (I'm assuming it still works). Open a konsole when you are on the Desktop and type: sudo blkid
Copy/paste the output in a reply.

[GreyGeek]

In the OPs case, I think the BusyBox is the result of a failed boot -- a kernel panic -- dropping you to a minimal Grub prompt.

I doubt it is a grub prompt. The kernel may have triggered BusyBox to throw open its built-in shell to give the user an opportunity to use the built-in commands, regardless if the HD was mounted or not.

BusyBox V1.22.1 (ubuntu 1:1.22.0-19ubuntu2) built in shell (ash)
Enter “ help” for a list pf built-in commands.
(initramfs)

I didn't even know what BusyBox was or that it was installed on Kubuntu until I read the OP and checked the repository.

The man page for busybox shows:

[B]COMMANDS[/B]
       Currently available applets include:

  [, [[, acpid, adjtimex, ar, arp, arping, ash, awk, basename, blockdev, 
brctl, bunzip2, bzcat, bzip2, cal, [B]cat[/B], [B]chgrp[/B], [B]chmod[/B], [B]chown[/B], [B]chpasswd[/B], 
chroot, chvt, [B]clear[/B], cmp, [B]cp[/B], cpio, crond, crontab, cttyhack, cut, date, dc, [B]
dd[/B], deallocvt, depmod, devmem, df, diff, dirname, [B]dmesg[/B], dnsdomainname, 
dos2unix, [B]dpkg[/B], dpkg-deb, du, dumpkmap, dumpleases, [B]echo[/B], ed, egrep, [B]
env[/B], expand, expr, false, [B]fdisk[/B], fgrep, [B]find[/B], fold, free, freeramdisk, fstrim, 
ftpget, ftpput, getopt, getty, [B]grep[/B], groups, gunzip, gzip, [B]halt[/B], head, 
hexdump, hostid, hostname, httpd, hwclock, id, [B]ifconfig[/B], [B]ifdown[/B], [B]ifup[/B], 
init, [B]insmod[/B], ionice, ip, ipcalc, [B]kill[/B], killall, klogd, last, [B]less[/B], [B]ln[/B], loadfont, 
loadkmap, logger, [B]login[/B], logname, logread, losetup, [B]ls[/B], [B]lsmod[/B], lzcat, 
lzma, lzop, lzopcat, [B]md5sum[/B], mdev, microcom, [B]mkdir[/B], mkfifo, mknod, 
mkswap, mktemp, [B]modinfo[/B], [B]modprobe[/B], more, [B]mount[/B], mt, [B]mv[/B], nameif, 
nc, [B]netstat[/B], [B]nslookup[/B], od, openvt, passwd, patch, pidof, [B]ping[/B], ping6, 
pivot_root, [COLOR=#ff0000][B]poweroff[/B][/COLOR], printf, ps, [B]pwd[/B], rdate, readlink, realpath, [COLOR=#ff0000][B]reboot[/B][/COLOR], 
renice, reset, rev, [B]rm,[/B] [B]rmdir[/B], [B]rmmod[/B], route, rpm, rpm2cpio, run-parts, 
[B]sed[/B], seq, setkeycodes, setsid, sh, sha1sum, sha256sum, sha512sum, 
sleep, sort, start-stop-daemon, stat, static-sh, strings, stty, [B]su[/B], sulogin, 
swapoff, swapon, switch_root, sync, sysctl, syslogd, tac, tail, tar, taskset, 
[B]tee[/B], telnet, telnetd, test, tftp, time, timeout, [B]top[/B], touch, tr, traceroute,
traceroute6, true, tty, tunctl, udhcpc, udhcpd, [B]umount[/B], uname, 
uncompress, unexpand, uniq, unix2dos, unlzma, unlzop, unxz, unzip, 
uptime, usleep, uudecode, uuencode, vconfig, vi, watch, watchdog, wc, [B]
wget[/B], which, [B]who[/B], whoami, xargs, xz, xzcat, yes, zcat

Looks like almost a completely redundant set of utilities, except they do not include "exit" (from the shell, which is why many posted attempts at solutions by exiting the shell failed), "startx" (I read one attempt to use startx from the shell and the system tried and died, falling back to the shell, so in that case perhaps the disk and kernel were up and running), fsck, fdisk, the systemctl, or journalctl, and several other CLI commands.

So, one could easily tell if the HD was mounted and the kernel running by doing the "ls" command in the busybox shell. That would make a difference on the next step. If a directory listing was obtained one could then list the processes with ps or top, mount or unmount drives or USB sticks allowing the use of the cp command to move data from the HD to a removable medium. Etc.....

[reb81]

Mr. Barman,
Good news, I was able to get your computer going. The people on the forms were half right but their solution was not the correct one.
I was able to manually go through and correct the file system that the update had messed up and reinstall the correct version of BusyBox. It took just a little while but I wanted to get it going for you tonight so you could have it tomorrow.
SOLVED

[GreyGeek]

Reb81 must live near Barman. Physically working on the machine is better than working on it remotely which is better than merely giving advice


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