Bug 155354

Summary: Network installation (HTTP/FTP) fails with boot.iso during software selection (vmware)
Product: [openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1 Reporter: Forgotten User gwvjqN9qyZ <forgotten_gwvjqN9qyZ>
Component: YaST2Assignee: Klaus Kämpf <kkaempf>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact: Klaus Kämpf <kkaempf>
Severity: Blocker    
Priority: P5 - None CC: forgotten_gwvjqN9qyZ, justin, suse-beta
Version: Beta 6   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: x86   
OS: SuSE Linux 10.1   
Whiteboard:
Found By: System Test Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Attachments: All logs from /var/log/YaST2

Description Forgotten User gwvjqN9qyZ 2006-03-06 08:44:32 UTC 
When attempting to install SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta6 (factory) in a VMWare 5.0 virtual machine (host OS: Windows 2003), 256mb virtual ram, with virtual SCSI device and one-processor mode, installation will be blocked while getting package information.

With the appropiate boot/boot.iso, Network installation will fail during "Paketauswahl wird ausgewertet" (Reviewing package selection). This is the dialog that appears right after *** Starting YaST2 ****. No matter if using YaST2 in GUI or ncurses mode, the result will be the same.

After some initial network activity when YaST tries to find information about package selection, activity will halt. In graphical mode, the mouse cursor will freeze and turning off power of the virtual machine is needed. In ncurses mode, after a while there will be an error "Während der Installation trat ein Fehler auf" (there was an error during installation), and Yast will die with:

/usr/lib/YaST2/startup/YaST2.call: line 306: Killed

I might have missed the fact that network installation is not featured at the moment, however I still tried on several mirrors (with factory inst-source) and had the same effect. If I MUST install from isos (please let me know), sorry for this report. Otherwise, you might want to take a look at this.
Comment 1 Michael Gross 2006-03-06 09:33:18 UTC 
> I might have missed the fact that network installation is not featured at the
> moment.

Not to my knowledge. Can you attach the YaST logfiles of the failed installation?
Comment 2 Forgotten User gwvjqN9qyZ 2006-03-06 23:40:44 UTC 
Created attachment 71485 [details]
All logs from /var/log/YaST2
Comment 3 Forgotten User gwvjqN9qyZ 2006-03-06 23:41:24 UTC 
Here I come with a few more infos...

On Boot screen, I select TEXT MODE, choose language "German" and enter the boot option "manual". 

If using ncurses and I decide to wait several minutes during no network activity, SUSE will actually come up with a proper error message that says (under "Software Auswahl" (Software selection)):

Die Paketdaten konnten nicht vom Installationsmedium gelesen werden. Es liegt moeglicherweise ein Fehler am Installationsmedium vor. FEHLER: Kein Vorschlag
(Translation: Package data could not be read from the installation media. Probably there exists an error with the installation media. ERROR: No proposal)

Full logs have been included, thanks to SUSE's intelligent approach to include applications such as scp into the boot/installation system. Please see attachment for further details, I hope you will find the problem and post me a fix, so I can actively help testing SUSE 10.1 in a virtual machine without causing unnecessary traffic for all of us - by downloading 5 CD's when all I need is a minimal server installation with some ISP related daemons. 

PS: Yes, I'm a terminal guy, I don't need X11 for anything and as long as SUSE will supports these needs, I will stick with SUSE since it perfectly suits my needs. Don't ever get the idea of removing ncurses support such as schemes for console only installations!
Comment 4 Michael Gross 2006-03-07 14:22:14 UTC 
Actually there was some talk about dropping the ncurses support for YaST however only time can show what really will happen. I think people around here won't let this happen.

Does this work on a real machine or is this only failing in vmware? I suppose this is an issue with the new packager. I could not find a report for this specific problem.

Klaus: Please have a look at this.
Comment 5 Klaus Kämpf 2006-03-07 18:56:58 UTC 
No proposal usually means the path to the package repository is wrong.

The original comment looks more like an OOM issue. 256MB is not sufficient for factory with > 20000 packages.
Comment 6 Forgotten User gwvjqN9qyZ 2006-03-13 15:47:03 UTC 
Klaus: Great comment. So that means I shall retry with 512mb? What about giving the user a real warning so they could find out themselves? (e.g. "You do not have sufficient ram to install from this repository?"). If the path to the package repository was wrong, how could it even load the installer to the ram? Please advise with more details. 

Michael: If you drop support for yast2-ncurses, SUSE will lose a huge amount of professional users (admins) without any single doubt. yast2-ncurses is one of the best things you invented during the last years, dropping that would be a kick in the ass of everyone who learned linux without mouse-clicking and who would like to administrate their servers using SSH.
Comment 7 Stanislav Visnovsky 2006-03-14 12:56:42 UTC 
It is not really possible to find out the amount of memory needed. Factory
is indeed the biggest source we've ever created with cca 700MB worth of description itself.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 157474 ***
Comment 8 Christian Boltz 2006-03-14 21:50:42 UTC 
Great - bug 157474 is not accessable public :-(
Can you please open it?
Comment 9 Justin Grote 2006-05-13 16:54:03 UTC 
*** Bug 175567 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Justin Grote 2006-05-13 17:00:20 UTC 
Just a bump about the yast2-ncurses thing, I use that from SSH *all the time*, especially in SLES and OES. While I admit I could live with going graphical now that FreeNX has come about, I still would much prefer the ncurses unless it causes a significant impedement to YaST2 future development.