Bug 1143945

Summary:	[Build228.2] package os-prober not provided so option "Probe foreign OS" is not taking into account
Product:	[SUSE Linux Enterprise Server] Beta SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1	Reporter:	Joaquín Rivera <jeriveramoya>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	Alexander Herzig <aherzig>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	grace.wang, jeriveramoya, okurz
Version:	GMC
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Joaquín Rivera 2019-08-02 07:48:45 UTC

I experience the same problem that this user is reporting: http://lists.suse.com/pipermail/sle-beta/2018-April/000515.html

Basically I create a new VM with 40GB and I performed basic installation for registered installation for SLE12-SP3 leaving 20GB free. I boot the installed system to verify that was ok.
Next I crate a new VM reusing the same qcow to install on top SLE-15-SP1 GMC. When installing I took care to use the wizard so I kept previous partitions, so besides vda1-3 created in the previous installation this time were added vda4-6. Then on booting option in the last step of the installation I went to corresponding tab where I select "Probe foreign OS" and install the system.
The grub does not add automatically and entry for previous SLE-12-SP3 in the disk and the package is not there.
Am I doing something wrong in this step, this "Probe foreign OS" is not corrected documented? (btw I found this doc for Leap: https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/reference/html/book.opensuse.reference/cha.grub2.html#sec.grub2.yast2.config.advanced.boot-loader) or just a missing package that YaST installer is not giving us any warning about the no effect of this option?

Comment 1 Joaquín Rivera 2019-08-02 09:52:06 UTC

Increased severity as os-prober seems to be a critical piece.

Comment 2 Jiri Srain 2019-08-02 11:58:12 UTC

The os-prober package is part of SLE15-SP1 Workstation Extension; unless you select it, it is really not available. Which makes some sense in production; for server, you typically only run one OS on the host, while on desktop using two is quite common.

Besides documentation, I can see two solutions:

- check presence / availability of OS-prober and react accordingly in YaST

- put os-prober to the base system module

Since I don't know if there are more reasons for current location (except what I wrote above), is the first option an acceptable solution for you?

Comment 3 Joaquín Rivera 2019-08-02 12:18:50 UTC

I would go for the second, it looks to me basic tool and it is more flexible in case some customers have an scenario no so typical for a server. But I'm not aware about what customer could need that and in openQA we don't have this kind of scenarios. I know there is some restrictions on size of the image, so maybe we could ask for feedback about it.
The first option, showing a warning that the package is not in the medium seems to me a little strange, because then the user should go back quite a lot in the installer (we are in the last screen at that moment) and then select WE module and move forward again, strange flow I would say.

Comment 4 Jiri Srain 2019-08-02 12:26:14 UTC

Alex, please, evaluate in the release managers' team whether it is possible to move the package to the base system for 15-SP2.

If there is a strong reason not to do that, please, reassign back to me (and explain the reason as I would be curious about it).

Comment 5 Frederic Crozat 2019-08-06 15:35:54 UTC

Probe foreign OS / os-prober are feature which were considered only useful for SLED installation (or SLE-WE) and not on a regular SLES install (you don't want to do dual-boot on a server).

We should enable the feature in YaST only if os-prober is available.

Comment 6 Joaquín Rivera 2019-10-07 06:49:45 UTC

Updating component on this ticket to YaST so the option (checkbox) will be disable for SLES.