Bug#562051: Partman hanging on 52%, Polish language on MD devices
Package: installation-reports
Boot method: CD or USB stick
Image version: lenny, weekly testing - see below for details
Date: 2009-10-28
Machine: i386 or amd64 (not sure, see below)
Partitions: detailed dump of all disks below
Initial boot: [O]
Detect network card: [O]
Configure network: [O]
Detect CD: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [E]
Install base system: [ ]
Clock/timezone setup: [ ]
User/password setup: [ ]
Install tasks: [ ]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Overall install: [ ]
Comments/Problems:
This is a bug report forwarded from user Andrzej Kosmala on the
debian-user-polish mailing list. He prefers to write in English so I'm
translating for him. It's been a while since I installed Debian, so some of my
descriptions may not match the actual English messages, as I'm simply
translating his Polish descriptions.
The thread started at http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-polish/2009/10/msg00059.html
He tried to install lenny on a set of disks in the following configuration:
md0: /dev/sda1 (RAID1, degraded)
md1: /dev/hda7 /dev/hdc1 (RAID1)
md2: /dev/sda2 /dev/hdc3 (RAID1)
Here is some more information about the disks:
/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Disk /dev/hda: 40.1 GB, 40060403712 bytes
|255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders
|Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
|Disk identifier: 0xfe50fe50
|
| Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
|/dev/hda1 1 65 522081 82 Linux swap / Solaris
|/dev/hda2 * 66 623 4482135 83 Linux
|/dev/hda4 624 4870 34114027+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
|/dev/hda5 624 1865 9976333+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
|/dev/hda6 1866 2871 8080663+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
|/dev/hda7 2872 3032 1293201 fd Linux raid autodetect
|/dev/hda8 3033 4111 8667036 83 Linux
|/dev/hda9 4112 4870 6096636 83 Linux
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
|255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
|Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
|Disk identifier: 0x0007a06f
|
| Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
|/dev/hdb1 * 1 2433 19543041 83 Linux
|/dev/hdb2 2434 4865 19535040 8 AIX
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Disk /dev/hdc: 40.1 GB, 40060403712 bytes
|255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders
|Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
|Disk identifier: 0x91d36b79
|
| Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
|/dev/hdc1 * 1 161 1293201 fd Linux raid autodetect
|/dev/hdc2 940 4870 31575757+ 83 Linux
|/dev/hdc3 162 939 6249285 fd Linux raid autodetect
|
|Partition table entries are not in disk order
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Disk /dev/sda: 9186 MB, 9186603008 bytes
| 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1116 cylinders
| Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
| Disk identifier: 0x00065af5
|
| Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
| /dev/sda1 * 1 338 2714953+ fd Linux raid autodetect
| /dev/sda2 339 1116 6249285 fd Linux raid autodetect
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the configuration before starting the installer. The partioning program
showed all of them as expected.
The steps to reproduce the problem:
1) select Polish language
2) in the partitioning tool select /dev/md2
3) choose ext3 as the filesystem
4) choose "format"
5) mount as the root filesystem
6) go back to the main menu of the partitioning program
Now, the behaviour differs slightly depending on what the user wanted to do next:
7a) select another partition ->
a progress bar appears, immediately goes to 52%, and hangs forever
7b) select "save changes and continue with the installation" ->
a progress bar appears, proceeds up to 52%, at which point it hangs forever
A piece of output from tty4 retyped by hand:
| Oct 22 18:15:44 kernel: [ 229.146501] device-mapper: iocl: 4.14.0-ioctl (2008-04-23) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
| Oct 22 18:15:44 kernel: [ 229.283747] md2:
| Oct 22 18:15:44 kernel: unknown partition table
| Oct 22 18:15:46 partman: No matching physical volumes found
| Oct 22 18:15:47 partman: Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
| Oct 22 18:16:26 kernel: [ 270.686373] end-request I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
| Oct 22 18:17:04 kernel: [ 308.900516] end-request I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
| Oct 22 18:18:58 init: starting pid 11094, tty '':'/sbin/reopen-console /sbin/debian-installer
| Oct 22 18:18:59 debconf: setting debconf/language to pl
| Oct 22 18:18:59 main-menu [11106]: INFO: Falling back to the package description for auto-install
| Oct 22 18:18:59 main-menu [11106]: INFO: Falling back to the package description for ai-chosser
| Oct 22 18:18:59 main-menu [11106]: INFO: Menu item 'partman-base' selected
Andrzej unsuccessfully tried to install from:
- lenny 502a,
- lenny 503
- a few "testing" weekly images
- using both standard and "expert" modes
He finally succeeded after doing the following:
1) While the installer was running in Polish:
2) First, in a shell (tty2) changed all RAID partitions (type "fd") to type linux (type "83")
3) restarted the installer
4) the partitioning program did not detect any RAID disks, but did show three
(empty) arrays
5) the partitioning program hung as usual (52%)
6) at this point, he started the installer using English, and it worked!
That last try was from netinst-testing from 2009-10-10
He had also tried a weekly testing image from 2009-10-20, unsuccessfully
(possibly because he had tried that one in Polish).
This suggests that some program is started in a locale diffent than C, and its
output is then parsed, which breaks when a message in Polish is produced, or
when for example a locale-specific number formatting is used.
There were no visible differences in what the partitioning program presented.
(No missing partitions, etc, when in Polish).
Please let me know if you have further questions, I will forward them to
Andrzej.
regards,
Marcin
--
Marcin Owsiany <porridge@debian.org> http://marcin.owsiany.pl/
GnuPG: 1024D/60F41216 FE67 DA2D 0ACA FC5E 3F75 D6F6 3A0D 8AA0 60F4 1216
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