Q I have a PC that I've put together using bits and pieces of old machines that I've scrounged from friends and relatives. It has a 13.5GB hard drive, Pentium III 600 processor and 384MB RAM. I'm trying to run Ubuntu 7.04 and having managed to make the Live CD and made the necessary change to my BIOS, my machine will actually start up and get me to the Ubuntu start-up list with the choices of booting methods. However, regardless of whichever method I choose, I eventually get a screen message that says:
BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-3ubuntu3) Built-in shell (ash) Enter "help" for a list of built-in commands. /bin/sh: can't access tty: job control turned off (initramfs)
Can you please tell me what's wrong and, if possible, what I can do to fix the problem to get Ubuntu started properly?
A This is a known problem with a couple of older releases. There were various workarounds and fixes floating around at the time, but they're no longer necessary. The problem is caused by an incompatibility between your hardware and this particular version, but there have been three further releases of Ubuntu since then, all of which should avoid the problem. I suggest you try again with a newer version of Ubuntu and you'll find this problem is no longer there.