Rebuilding Kernel 4.15.0-23 Fails under certain conditions

[wmccaffery]

Attempting to rebuild kernel 4.15.0-23 fails, as was described in issue #191, however upon entering the chroot and purging the kernel image, then reinstalling the same kernel, the build will succeed. Although I haven't been able to determine a cause for this, I've put all the information I have below concerning the events and conditions, so it should be repeatable. I hope that this can be of some help.

Failing to build

Method:

customizer -e
customizer -c
    apt-get update
    apt-get full-upgrade
customizer -r

Error Message

gzip: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-23-generic: not in gzip format
cpio: premature end of archive
* SUBPROCESS: Command '/usr/sbin/chroot /opt/customizer/FileSystem zcat /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-23-generic | cpio --quiet -id conf/uuid.conf' returned non-zero exit status 2

running file on initrd.img-4.15.0-23-generic inside chroot returns:
/boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-23-generic: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)

Successful build

Method:

customizer -e
customizer -c
    apt-get update
    apt-get full-upgrade
    apt purge linux-image-4.15.0-23
    apt-get autoremove
    apt-get install linux-image-4.15.0-23 
customizer -r

running file on initrd.img-4.15.0-23-generic inside chroot returns:
initrd.img-4.15.0-23-generic: gzip compressed data, last modified: Tue Jun 19 15:14:53 2018, from Unix

Extra Info:

Customizer version: 4.1.5
Host OS: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Host Kernel: 4.15.0-23-generic
Image being remastered: ubuntu-mate-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso
Image original kernel: 4.15.0.20-generic
image kernel after update: 4.15.0.23-generic

It should be noted that this issue does not occur with the 4.15.0-20 or 4.15.0.22 generic kernel.

Thanks,
Will

[kamilion]

Fixed in the latest build -- this failure happens due to microcode updates with the 'early' setting, which is the new default for L1FT and other mitigations.

Thanks for your excellent report -- it was invaluable in tracking the issue down.

https://github.com/kamilion/customizer/releases/tag/4.2.0-0
The unmkinitramfs script is attached to the latest release artifacts. You'll need it to handle ISOs before bionic.

[Mannshoch]

I have now this issue on the current compiled Customizer.
with 4.15.0-47-generic
purge and reinstall not helped

[dlarue]

And I get that error too running 18.04 ...

Starting Customizer with ('/usr/bin/python3', '/usr/sbin/customizer-gui')...

• Read Configuration file: /etc/customizer.conf
  QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root'
• Read Configuration file: /etc/customizer.conf
• Read Configuration file: /etc/customizer.conf
• Read Configuration file: /etc/customizer.conf
  => Checking
  => Doing sanity checks
  => Gathering information
  => Cleaning up
  => Updating initramfs
  update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-48-generic
  update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-38-generic
  => Copying boot files
  => Extracting casper UUID
  An error occured while a thread was running:
  Type: <class 'RuntimeError'>
  Details:
  b'gzip: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-48-generic: not in gzip format\ncpio: premature end of archive'