Gutsy on ibook

I'm trying to install Ubuntu 7.10 on an iBook with dual USB. Well, not exactly gutsy, since it isn't officially ported yet. I've tried installing 2 of the recent daily builds. Most recently 20071016.

After about 5 tries, I haven't found a way to get around this:

Loading, please wait...
     Check root= bootarg cat /proc/cmdline
     or missing modules, devices: cat /proc/modules ls /dev
ALERT! /dev/dha3 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

That message appears after a complete install and the first boot into the system.

Its funny because the first boot gets to the point of displaying the Ubuntu splash screen and progress bar, but then fails after about 5 minutes and displays this. If /dev/hda3 doesn't exist, how did it find that graphic?

The shell that I get doesn't know how to do a df, so I'm not sure how to troubleshoot the disk. The shell does know how to do a mount, but I'm not sure what parameters to feed the mount command to get it to work. "mount /dev/hda3" responds with "Cannot read /etc/fstab: No such file or directory."

Using the install CD as a rescue disk lets me see that the install looks like it completed successfully and everything is really there. The rescue mode is pretty amazing.

Using the rescue mode, I can see that my yaboot.conf looks like this:

## yaboot.conf generated by the Ubuntu installer
##
## run: "man yaboot.conf" for details. Do not make changes until you have!!
## see also: /usr/share/doc/yaboot/examples for example configurations.
##
## For a dual-boot menu, add one or more of:
## bsd=/dev/hdaX, macos=/dev/hdaY, macosx=/dev/hdaZ

boot=/dev/hda2
device=/pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-4@1f000/disk@0:
partition=3
root=/dev/hda3
timeout=50
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
enablecdboot

image=/vmlinux
	label=Linux
	read-only
	initrd=/initrd.img
	append="quiet splash"

image=/vmlinux.old
	label=old
	read-only
	initrd=/initrd.img.old
	append="quiet splash"

Ahh, Google has already found out that this is the answer I need: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=559099

And here is the bug that I'm tripping over: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/126337

Awesome. After doing the modprobe, the boot is getting farther, but the problem isn't fixed.

Using the rescue disk and doing this:

Add

ide_core
ide_disk
ide_cd

to /usr/share/initramfs-tools/modules

#update-initramfs -u

and rebooting didn't actually fix the problem.

But

modprobe ide_disk
modprobe ide_core
modprobe ide_cd

got me to a regular boot session without the rescue disk and then doing the

update-initramfs -u

still doesn't work.

Found this on another ubuntu forum:

Thus, to fix this bug:

1. Edit /etc/initramfs/modules and add at the bottom "ide_generic" (without the " of course
2. Update the initramfs with sudo update-initramfs
3. reboot! 

I'll have to try that when I get home.