Bug 104583

Summary: Installation Failure
Product: [openSUSE] SUSE LINUX 10.0 Reporter: Dale Slaughter <allis306>
Component: YaST2Assignee: Thomas Fehr <fehr>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact: Klaus Kämpf <kkaempf>
Severity: Normal    
Priority: P5 - None CC: allis306, jsrain
Version: Beta 1   
Target Milestone: Beta 2   
Hardware: i686   
OS: SUSE Other   
Whiteboard:
Found By: Other Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Attachments: tar czvf of /var/log/YaST2
tar czvf of /mnt/var/log/YaST2

Description Dale Slaughter 2005-08-14 03:14:12 UTC
Installing opneSuSE 10.0 beta1.  At the point of where it had installed the
packages from CD1, and was attempting to create a boot entry? when I received an
error that it couldn't.  The system then locked up, and I couldn't abort.  Had
to power off.

My current system:
  hda1 : WindowsXP - NTFS
  hda2 : Windows - FAT32
  hda3 : linux - /boot
  hda4 : extended partition
  hda5 : linux - swap
  hda6 : linux - /home
  hda7 : linux - /
  hda8 : was formatted as linux (reiserfs) and was unused.  This was where I was
installing openSuSE.


I took these steps:
  new installation
  changed software to select more packages
  changed partitioning
     create custom partition setup
     hard disk    1. IDE
  It was then after the installation of the packages that what I think it said 
  was the boot problem.

I've tried to recreate this problem, and have failed to even get to the point of
the original problem - I think because the the original problem trashed my
/dev/hda8 by taking it and creating three areas: free space, an hda8, and then
more free space.

I'm sorry this is vague, and that I wasn't able to recreate to get the y2logs. 
If this isn't enough information to persue this problem, then my apologies for
wasting your time.
Comment 1 Dale Slaughter 2005-08-15 03:11:59 UTC
I rebuilt /dev/hda8, and was able to re-create the problem.  Before the install
from CD1 started, there was a message in red that because of the partition
configuration, it wouldn't be able to install a boot loader - which was fine
with me, since I already use GRUB to boot between WinXP and GENTOO (GENTOO is
using the above linux partitions).  I was going to manually update GRUB to boot
SuSE.

A little more detailed information on where the process seemed to halt:

  Finishing Basic Installation screen
    Install boot manager
      saving boot loader configuration files   ( the progress bar was 76% )

I've since read you site about gathering information during installation and
yast.  If I have time, I'll fix /dev/hda8 again and reinstall, and them save
/tmp/y2logs to a USB device.
Comment 2 Jiri Srain 2005-08-15 07:30:31 UTC
Could you, please, attach the logs? See  
http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Bug_Reporting_FAQ#YaST for details.  
  
To get the logs, just switch to 2nd terminal when it freezes, mount somewhere  
any partition of your disk, and tar-up ther /var/log/YaST2/  
and /mnt/var/log/YaST2/ directories.  
  
This is the first report about this problem, so I need the logs to determine  
its cause. Thanks in advance!  
Comment 3 Dale Slaughter 2005-08-16 02:10:50 UTC
I've attached - using 'tar czvf' - the /var/log/YaST2 and /mnt/var/log/YaST2 as
var_log_YaST2 and mnt_var_log_YaST2 respectively.  Hope this helps.
Comment 4 Dale Slaughter 2005-08-16 02:20:36 UTC
Created attachment 46121 [details]
tar czvf of /var/log/YaST2
Comment 5 Dale Slaughter 2005-08-16 02:22:17 UTC
Created attachment 46122 [details]
tar czvf of /mnt/var/log/YaST2
Comment 6 Jiri Srain 2005-08-16 07:22:24 UTC
I guess the freeze was caused by missing device to install bootloader to. I 
will go on analyzing the log. 
Comment 7 Jiri Srain 2005-08-16 08:07:01 UTC
The problem is that bootloader installer got incorrect information from 
partitioner. According to the log: 
 
2005-08-15 20:01:05 <1> linux(2574) [YCP] Storage.ycp:2836 ret $["/windows/C":
["/dev/hda1", 7, "/dev/hda", ""], "/windows/D":["/dev/hda2", 12, "/dev/hda", 
""], "swap":[["/dev/hda5", 130, "/dev/hda", ""]]] 
 
Obviously the root partition is missing here (it was after changing the 
partitinoing). 
 
Thomas, Arvin, can you learn from the log why partitioner returned incorrect 
data? 
Comment 8 Thomas Fehr 2005-08-16 09:58:36 UTC
Strange, I am currently investigating this.
Comment 9 Thomas Fehr 2005-08-16 10:45:42 UTC
Fixed in current libstorage. Will be available in beta#3.
Comment 10 Dale Slaughter 2005-08-16 12:53:42 UTC
So it's a known problem, thanks for looking into this.  Any timeframe when 
beta#3 will available?

Also, a related question to the above problem.  My IBM Thinkpad T40 has 
a 'protected' area at the end of the disk that IBM uses for recovering the 
WindowsXP system (I think your logs showed this area being detected).  The 
total hard drive size is 40G, but the usable size is ~36G.  The first time I 
attempted the install, when I choose the 'create custom partition setup', it 
listed /dev/hda1 - /dev/hda9, with hda9 being the protected area.  When I 
choose hda8 to install SuSE into, it wouldn't let me and said something like it 
had to install in the last partition.  To get around this problem I had to go 
into the BIOS setup, and 'secure' the protected area.  Then when I tried the 
install, HDA8 was the last listed partition, and I clicked hda8 and SuSE was 
fine with that.

And is my attempted setup in my current configuration logical - that is to 
share the swap, /boot/ and /home /partitions between GENTOO and SuSE?
Comment 11 Thomas Fehr 2005-08-16 16:16:16 UTC
Meanwhile I saw that the fix will also be in beta#2.
Comment 12 Thomas Fehr 2005-08-16 16:23:43 UTC
I would be cautious with sharing /boot partitions between different linux
flavors. It depends on what the pre/postinstall scripts of the two distributions
will exactly do if this will work reliable. I would suggest at least saving
the content of your /boot partition and be careful when doing kernel updates.

Sharing swap and /home should be fine.

The strange thing with the host protected area is known. Unfortunately there 
is nothing much than BIOS setup to influence this. 
Comment 13 Dale Slaughter 2005-08-17 12:42:58 UTC
Thank you!