Bugzilla – Bug 105441
Partitioner fails completely
Last modified: 2005-08-22 08:37:44 UTC
Tried to install beta 2 on an x86 machine 512MB memory, came to the installation settings screen and wanted to change the partitioning. I went to the partitioning setup and told it to "use entire hard disk". There is only one hard drive in the system, IDE /dev/hda The proposal was /dev/hda1 as extended, /dev/hda5 as swap and /dev/hda6 as root partition. Partitions were formatted and the packages were installed. When I got to the point where grub was installed, I got an installation error. When I examined the system, I found that /dev/hda6 didn't exist anymore. The only partitions in the system were /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda5 I rebooted and went to tty2 and created hda6 with fdisk and went back to the partitioner on tty7. hda6 was not seen. When I tried to create it, I got an error that the cylinder numbers weren't valid. There used to be an option to reread the partition table on this screen. Why was this removed? On reboot the new partition was seen, and the system is currently installing. I will update the bug report with the result when it's done.
Update: with the manually created partition table, the installation was successful
Please provide y2logs, see: http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Bug_Reporting_FAQ#YaST
The option to reread the partition table still exists, it is a menue entry under the "Expert" button on the lower row of buttons in Expter partitioner. To do something about the bug we need the logs of a failed installation, not of a succesful one.
I just redid the installation from scratch and did it the way I did it the first time, and it failed in exactly the same way. I'm attaching the yast log files from this installation attempt
Created attachment 46453 [details] log files from failed installation attempt
Thanks for the logs. Jiri, I think this is a problem with bootloader, from the view of storage all went fine. I think the problem could be caused by the new dynamic /dev directory. Maybe there is no instance that creates device node for /dev/hda6 in the installed system. Last log entries are: Y2SystemFunction.cc(useRemote):129 'initializeBootloader': switched to remote 2StdioFunction.cc(evaluateCall):137 Evaluating remote call to 'Bootloader_API::init bootloader/routines/lib_iface.ycp:204 Error occurred while initializing bootloader BootGRUB.ycp:572 GRUB return value: nil
Yes, missing /dev/hda6 is the problem. GRUB needs to open the device. Please, attach also YaST logs from the instaleld system (during installation /mnt/var/log/YaSTY2), they would be more useful in this case to proof how GRUB failed. Reassigning to udev maintainer.
i don't understand this last remark. The logs I got were from var/log/YaST2 during the failed installation attempt. Since the root partition disappears, I can't boot to it. Do you mean you want me to create the partition manually again and install the complete system to send you logs from?
Well, what exactly do you mean? Partition disappears, or the node in /dev disappears? While finishing basic installation, a part of YaST runs in chroot environment in the target syetem. And it also puts logs there. So, the output of GRUB command itself is logged there.
By the way, some of the comments seem to say that you think it's only a problem with the dynamic devs. Just to confirm, the partition does not exist on the hard drive partition table at the point grub tries to install. It is gone
Ah, thanks for clarification. Then, it is problem for you, Thomas. Without the ability to determine where the partition begins and ends, GRUB can hardly install properly.
I seriously doubt it is a problem of yast2-storage. I already analized the logs and there is no problem with creating the partiton /dev/hda6, mounting it, installing package onto it. How should installation of all packages succeed if there is no partition /dev/hda6. No idea what exactly happens during system startup but to my knowledge yast2-storage is not involved here at all.
Related issue: when trying to create a new partion in a running system, creating a filesystem fails because the device node was not created until after the mkreiserfs was called. Thomas told me this is due to udev creating the device nodes asynchronously.
Created attachment 46467 [details] y2log of failed partition creation
@comment #12: I understand your concern. I must say I have no clue why the partition table on the disk is corrupted. Bootloader installer modifies MBR, but not the are where partition table resides (but for running the activate command). And, hda6 is logical partition, so info about it is not stored in MBR AFAIK.
On rebooting and restarting the installation from scratch, I get an error message saying 'the partition table is not readable by parted'
Ok, I looked at the logs once more and found the following error messages issued by parted during partition creation: You found a bug in GNU Parted. Please email parted-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org or (preferably) file a bug report at http://parted.alioth.debian.org/bugs/ Your report should contain the version of this release (1.6.24) along with the following message and preferably additional information about your setup: Assertion (metadata_length > 0) at disk_dos.c:1983 in function add_logical_part_metadata() failed. Unfortunately parted still gives a exit code of 0 therefore I did not see this on my first scan through the logs.
It seems to happen only when choosing "use entire hard disk". I just manually wiped the partition table using fdisk, and started the installation. The proposal then became to create hda1 and hda2 as swap and root respectively, and this partition table worked
Sure the parted bug is in creation of a logical partitition so if you create primariy partitions it will not show up. Unfortunately the problem is not reproducible on the ide disk I have in my machine. If I try the same partitioning commands here they succeed. Would it be possible to get access via ssh to the machine?
sure. Contact me on groupwise messenger (ajohansson)
Menwhile I was succefully reproducing it on another disk. I will probably contact you if I have a possible fix for parted. Thanks anyway.
Ok, I changed YaST2 now to avoid the parted problem. It would be very helpful if you could retry your installation with beta#3.
Will do, as soon as it's released :) (Unless I can find a prerelease with your fix included somewhere)
*** Bug 105445 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***