GRUB starts but init cant read any media

Question

So preconditions: I'm looking at a new machine, win10 is installed. I have easily downloaded the 20.04 iso.

I partition a section of the ssd at 10GB (sda5/D:) planning to copy the ubuntu installation media to that space.(disk manegment.)

Now it starts to get fun.

I google iso writer for windows. (probably a noob mistake). The top google results are mostly spam and ads. I find some top 10/ top 5 that agree on

• Free ISO Burner

A no go, the iso was too large. Now I notice, there's also a lot of ads in the start menu. Fun!

I download and install and randomly execute 6 more viruses promising iso capabilities.

I finally download a virus that can actually extract an iso. (This is the end of your free trial, you can only do this in the pro version).

I manage to write the ubuntu 20.04 iso to a partition d: in windows. Formatted as FAT (and FAT32). A file copy.

I did the same procedure with a USB drive - same result.

GRUB starts but init cant read any media.

in init I can see and ls (hd1,gpt5)/casper

I tried to edit the grub boot line to no avail.

Tried every variant of the secure boot options in the bios. On, Off, Clear keys. The Windows EFI partition is still there.

Answer 1

Bad installation media(For the usb drive) gave these rather unhelpful messages.

This was compounded by the fact that RST, Intel Rapid storage, was activated on the disk. Which apparently makes it inaccessible to the Ubuntu installer (don't quote me on that). This is my first contact with Intel RST.

I strongly suspect that IRS made the install(iso extracted) partition behave similar to the faulty USB drive.

RST & Ubuntu installation

If you intend to install Ubuntu on a computer that supports RST functionality, you may need to make operational adjustments to your setup before you can proceed.

By default, the Ubuntu installer can detect certain RAID configurations, but it may not necessarily be able to access and use the hard disks grouped in them.

https://help.ubuntu.com/rst/