*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 1865959 *** https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1865959
I tried updating another vm I have locally and did hit the issue this time. Starting from the update-initramfs process I followed the chain of child processes, which leads to a process running /usr/share/initramfs- tools/hooks/plymouth with two children, grep and sed. It looks to indicate this section from that file: THEME_PATH="$(update-alternatives --query default.plymouth 2>/dev/null | sed -e '/^Value:/!d' -e 's/^Value: \(.*\)/\1/')" IMAGE_PATH=$(grep "ImageDir *= *" ${THEME_PATH} | sed 's/ImageDir *= *//') The stdin fd for grep is /dev/pts/1, which seems to indicate that $THEME_PATH is empty and grep is therefore trying to read from the terminal. $ update-alternatives --query default.plymouth 2>/dev/null | sed -e '/^Value:/!d' -e 's/^Value: \(.*\)/\1/' This produces no output, which seems to confirm that $THEME_PATH will end up empty. Adding plymouth. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1866030 Title: Unable to install focal 5.4.0-17 proposed kernel, hang with update- initramfs To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1866030/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs