"trying to unpack rootfs image as initramfs" fail to load install cd

[aldend123]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can shed some light on a problem I'm having. I've had a hell of a time with an extremely unpredictable recently built computer. I don't even know where to start with the history, so I'll try to share some key facts.

Running Fc12

It is a Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR. Reviews on NewEgg have some complaints about instability and it's lack of claimed DDR3 support. I had to use settings described by another reviewer to underclock my memory to get it to work. It has since passed memtest many times.

I've encountered mutliple occasions of a complete system freeze.

Booting after freeze seems to require a random amount of restarts to get it to come up. Sometimes I have to hit the reset button 30+ times until I can get the log in prompt to come up.

Right now, I have one SATA HDD, in IDE compatibility mode in the system. I dropped the FC12 Stable dvd in, the very DVD I installed the current system with, to install it again on another partition. I get to the same point every time, where it hangs:

"trying to unpack rootfs image as initramfs"
Googling that didn't help me much, since it mostly seemed to address people messing with their own kernel builds.

If I choose "boot from local drive" on the options list from the install DVD, it goes to "PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT" with a blinking underscore cursor. Where when I boot normally, it will either give me JUST the blinking underscore alone, or the FC loading screen with no progress.

I suspect this motherboard is a pile of **** and needs to be RMA'ed, or simply returned. Anyone care to support or reject that hypothesis?

[jpollard]

Try running memtest - if memory is causing you a problem it should find it.

Another thing I ran across - the on-board power regulators may be bad. This only
shows up when the system starts getting loaded down when devices are being
brought on-line. Perhaps during the power up of the boot disk (as in loading/unpacking
the initrd...).

In my case, I found that if I removed any extra interfaces (I had two SCSI controllers)
it would work normally. It would also work if I had one SCSI controller installed (either
one), but would NOT work with both. As soon as the system started to use both
controllers (disk scan), the motherboard would loose power and hang.

It does sound like a bad motherboard.

[aldend123]

I ran memtest fairly recently, but I will set it to run again.

I just got a new error that I haven't seen before, after leaving the PC on all night and resetting 3 times in a row this morning.

RAMDISK: incomplete write (30034 != 32768)
write error
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Bad sata controller? Bad memory?

[jpollard]

It isn't a disk error if it comes from "ramdisk" - that is a memory resident filesystem
used for initrd (initrd is unpacked into it). The write error really looks like a memory
error. The rest of the failure - the panic - is from that. I think the "not syncing" part
is because the root device isn't yet finished...

Note - the memory chips themselves are likely not bad - just the motherboard.