Not working on Ubuntu Server

[bitinerant]

I have been unable to get this working on Ubuntu 18.04 Server on a Raspberry Pi 3.

As far as I can tell, everything is installed correctly (note Ubuntu uses /boot/firmware rather than /boot):

$ uname -a
Linux rpi3 4.15.0-1048-raspi2 #52-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Wed Sep 18 08:58:33 UTC 2019 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
Release:	18.04
Codename:	bionic

$ mount |grep mmc
/dev/mmcblk0p2 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/mmcblk0p1 on /boot/firmware type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)

$ grep initramfs /boot/firmware/config.txt 
#initramfs initrd.img followkernel
initramfs initrd.gz followkernel

$ grep overlay /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
overlay

$ ls -al /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/hooks-overlay /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-bottom/init-bottom-overlay
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  324 Oct 21 14:26 /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/hooks-overlay
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1973 Oct 21 14:30 /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-bottom/init-bottom-overlay

$ ls -al /boot/firmware/init.gz 
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18609106 Oct 21 15:14 /boot/firmware/init.gz

$ ls -al /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/functions /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22234 Apr 17  2019 /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20067 Dec 12  2018 /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/functions

$ 

However, after rebooting, there is no sign that init-bottom-overlay is even being run:

$ ls -al / |grep overlay

$ cat /var/log/syslog |grep overlay

$ mount |grep overlay

$ cat /proc/cmdline |grep overlay

$ cat /etc/fstab |grep overlay

$ 

[chesty]

Hi, I have an ubuntu desktop but I haven't tried installing this on it.

My ubuntu doesn't have a /boot/firmware, it's initrd images are in /boot, eg /boot/initrd.img-5.0.0-32-generic

On ubuntu I also use update-initramfs -k `uname -r` -u rather than mkinitramfs

Would you like to try backing out the change to made to /boot/firmware/config.txt and use update-initramfs to create the initrd?

[bitinerant]

@chesty - thank you for the response. :-)

I think only Ubuntu ARM images use /boot/firmware, and maybe only 18.04 and above. I'm not sure.

Your suggestion worked! My assumption that initramfs images go in /boot/firmware was wrong. I undid my config.txt changes, removed /boot/firmware/init.gz, ran sudo update-initramfs -k $(uname -r) -u (which updated /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-1048-raspi2), and rebooted.

Here are DRAFT install instructions for ARM Ubuntu Server:

sudo vi /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
#in vi, add line: overlay
sudo wget -O /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/hooks-overlay https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chesty/overlayroot/master/hooks-overlay
sudo wget -O /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-bottom/init-bottom-overlay https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chesty/overlayroot/master/init-bottom-overlay
sudo wget -O /bin/rootwork https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chesty/overlayroot/master/rootwork
sudo chmod +x /bin/rootwork
sudo apt-get install -y busybox  # removes: busybox-static ubuntu-standard
sudo update-initramfs -k $(uname -r) -u
vi ~/.bashrc
#in vi, add line: if [ ! -z "${IMCHROOTED}" ]; then
#in vi, add line:         PS1="chroot(${IMCHROOTED})\w:# "
#in vi, add line: fi
sudo reboot

I'll do additional testing and also rebuild the image from scratch to test my procedure, and then hopefully be able to write beter instructions.

Thanks again.

[chesty]

awesome. nice work. feel free to send me a pull request if you want to add your docs.

this line
sudo apt-get install -y busybox # removes: busybox-static ubuntu-standard

If you already had busybox-static installed, I would keep it if it works OK. I'm assume it's the same thing as busybox but should be more resilient if the file system goes pear shaped.

[bitinerant]

It's still working well for me, and I updated the documentation as part of PR#11. Closing.