"Premature end of file - amd-ucode.img"

Manjaro Development QA
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1

We had that issue as well with newer ISOs: start_image() returned 0x8000000000000001 (#2) · Issues · Release plan / Calamares · GitLab
Also, when using bees this can happen: GRUB: Extent not found after running bees · Issue #249 · Zygo/bees · GitHub

we can partly also blame grub and calamares for that on new ISOs. BTRFS support in grub is still partly a mess …

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I think it could at least partly be caused by the use of zstd compression — or, indeed, any compression at all — on the initramfs when /boot is on a btrfs filesystem, given that btrfs is commonly already used with compression of its own.

The double compression — and especially so if two different algorithms are used — will create sparse files, which grub cannot handle.

I cannot replicate the issue — or at least, not at the moment — because I’m on an all-Intel system, and even though I do have /boot on btrfs, I am using cat en lieu of compression in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. :point_down:

# COMPRESSION
# Use this to compress the initramfs image. By default, zstd compression
# is used for Linux ≥ 5.9 and gzip compression is used for Linux < 5.9.
# Use 'cat' to create an uncompressed image.
#COMPRESSION="zstd"
#COMPRESSION="gzip"
#COMPRESSION="bzip2"
#COMPRESSION="lzma"
#COMPRESSION="xz"
#COMPRESSION="lzop"
#COMPRESSION="lz4"
#COMPRESSION="zstd"
COMPRESSION=cat
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ISOs with linux612 are fine, those with linux615 broken. So far only on ISOs using grub and calamares.

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But that’s all of them, isn’t it? All of our ISOs use calamares for installing, and they all have grub as the default boot loader.

I don’t know too much about how calamares works — it’s written in Python, isn’t it? — but if it creates the initramfs with compression, then that could be the cause.

5

May I suggest reverting to ext4 as default file system ?

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6

For that matter, one could also have a small ext4 partition for /boot while keeping btrfs for the rest, although I’m not sure how well that would work with timeshift, snapper and friends.

I myself do have a separate /boot partition, but it’s btrfs as well, and I don’t use snapshots. I use timeshift in rsync mode, with the backups stored on a physically separate medium — a spinning HDD.

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That wont fix the matter that btrfs is broken and the ISO is not able to install it

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No - but at least there won’t be a lot of users using defaults which may fails…

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I recall musing whether making BTRFS the default might have been a little premature, generally; but, I think there’s a more obvious option;

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10

It’s not just the ISOs, apparently… :point_down:

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11

This could indicate that decompression is failing.

Test:

  • Generate initramdisk with 6.12 and boot with 6.15
  • Generate initramdisk with 6.15 and boot with 6.12
  • Generate initramdisk with cat (to avoid trying to compress twice)

Then you have a useful indication of whether the problem is with compression or decompression.

A simple workaround may be using cat (This may be the reason why some people (like me) don’t have problems whith booting 6.15) :footprints:
As can be seen, it’s really useful to have more than one kernel installed, and one of them LTS.

Please see also:

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