Bug#387855: LVM partitioner problems, sudo and user passwords problem
Package: installation-reports
Boot method: NetInstall CD.
Image version: etch beta 3
Date: 9/16/2006 9:10PM
Machine: Dell Dimension v4100
Processor: PIII 1GHz
Memory: 512MB
Partitions: <df -Tl will do; the raw partition table is preferred>
Output of lspci and lspci -n:
Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [O]
Config network: [O]
Detect CD: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [E]
Create file systems: [O]
Mount partitions: [O]
Install base system: [ ] in progress
Install boot loader: [ ]
Reboot: [ ]
Comments/Problems:
I discovered on Friday afternoon that there was an IRC bot in /var/tmp
on my Debian sid system, meaning I had been hacked somehow. I
immediately set about reinstalling.
In my first attempt Friday afternoon, I decided to try some
possibilities in the partitioner using LVM. I gave up fast, because I
couldn't figure out how to resize the LVM partitions from the defaults
the system gave me. I tried to use the guided partitioner to do a
default partitioning scheme *without* LVM, but even then the LVM
partitions continued to show up in the partitioner. I aborted at the
installation (without ever confirming that anything should be written to
disk), and found that the grub instance from the previous installation
could no longer make it even to the menu.
IOW, the paritioner's LVM stuff is writing something to disk before
asking confirmation. I gave up the installation becuase I didn't have
enough time to finish. That was friday.
I started a new install Saturday night. The partitioner worked fine (I
didn't try LVM this time), and didn't present any trace of LVM
partitions. I encountered two other bugs in the installation: I was
installing using a preseed file, (but not preseeding the actual
installer, just the debconf for packages to be installed on the system)
and somehow that causes the installer to return to the main menu after
each step to ask you to select the next step. The other bug is at the
point of creating users. It asked me whether I wanted to configure the
root on that system for sudo. I answered yes, it complained about a
blank password, and then asked me to enter "the password for the new
user" without ever asking me a username, or telling me that I was really
entering a root password. I tried that step again, this time without
sudo, and it asked me for "a password for the new user" (who I assume
must be root), but never asked me to create a new user account for a
normal user.
I'm now waiting for the installer to download and install packages, and
hopefully I'll be able to finish the installation before 11:00pm (so
that I can tell it to download a *much larger* collection of packages
overnight)
I'll follow up to this bug report with any problems in the rest of the
install (and also the missing fields in the above form).
--
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/
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