Unable to boot Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 Server [workaround]

[BadSquishy]

Hello Everyone -

I am attempting to install Ubuntu 6.06 Server Edition (Dapper Drake) as a guest operating system. I've gone through the whole process of creating a virtual machine, booting from a mounted ISO file and installing the operating system several times. Every time I get to the point where my installation is complete and I need to reboot into the new, installed guest OS the system freezes. When it tries to boot you can see Grub for a couple of seconds, then it uncompresses the kernel and freezes when attempting to load the kernel. The freeze looks like this:

Code: Select all

   Booting 'Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-26-server'

root (hd0,0)
  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-server root=/dev/hda3 ro quiet splash
    [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1c00, size=0x16c98f]
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.15-26-server
    [Linux=initrd @ 0x793e000, 0x6a1453 bytes]
savedefault
boot
Uncompressing Linux...  Ok, booting the kernel.

The CPU usage on the host system (Windows XP SP2) goes to 100% and stays there with nothing else happening. I let the system do this for over 1/2 an hour once, and I've deleted the virtual machine containing the failed install and started over from scratch 2 or 3 additional times.

Also, to see if it was the Windows host causing the problem I created another virtual machine and successfully installed Ubuntu Desktop Edition 7.04 so it has something to do with Ubuntu 6.06, maybe even the server edition specifically. I've also checked the User Manual and kernel 2.6.15 should work, maybe the Ubuntu patches that make it different from a vanilla 2.6.15 kernel have introduced the "race condition" that causes problems in 2.6.17 and 2.6.18?

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,
BadSquishy

[bodhi.zazen]

The problem is with the ubuntu server kernel.

http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/VirtualBo ... as_a_Guest

[BadSquishy]

Thanks for the workaround. It seems to have worked, at least it gets to the login prompt now.

However, this solution definitely degrades the usefulness of the virtual server. The point, for me, was to have an "extra" machine that I could use for testing software updates and changes, but if I have to change out a very significant portion of the base system (the kernel) then how can I be assured that software changes on my real systems will not have a different effect than they have had on the virtual system?

Well, I should be able to find out the specific differences between the two kernels, it may not make much difference for software testing. There were also differences between the real hardware and the virtual hardware, so the kernel modules being loaded were probably not the same already.

Thanks again for the workaround.
Regards,

BadSquishy