Evil Ubuntu Breezy Kernel Bug for I2O Controllers – Unbootable LiveCD!

Early last week I successfully upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 5.04 to the 5.10RC (Breezy release candidate) via apt-get dist-upgrade, and then on the weekend I had the chance to upgrade my desktop to it as well. Not a problem I thought, the laptop worked fine so the desktop would be easy too! How wrong I was..

I’ve now got an unbootable system because Breezy (even the Live CD!) tries to load both the dpt_i2o and the I2O subsystem at the same time. Now this is a Bad Thing ™ and results in a kernel panic whilst the kernel is loading.

Needless to say I’ve reported this as a bug (17897) but I don’t know how long it will take them to work out what to do about it. In the meantime I’m going to build myself a custom initrd without the troublesome I2O subsystem and see if that helps!

On the plus side my work machine (IDE drives) upgraded with no problems.