Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-bugs (5061 mails)

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https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=751102

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=751102#c0


           Summary: Will fail installing if after selecting 'mount other
                    linux w/ lvm' & blkid changed due to repartitioning
    Classification: openSUSE
           Product: openSUSE 12.1
           Version: Final
          Platform: x86-64
        OS/Version: openSUSE 12.1
            Status: NEW
          Severity: Major
          Priority: P5 - None
         Component: Installation
        AssignedTo: bnc-team-screening@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
        ReportedBy: grey-olli@xxxxx
         QAContact: jsrain@xxxxxxxx
          Found By: ---
           Blocker: ---


User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.16)
Gecko/20111108 Iceweasel/3.5.16 (like Firefox/3.5.16)

The story from today. :) I had to restart installation after a couple of
selections already made wasting a lot of time. 

I should note, that I refuse to replay the situation - this will take too many
efforts (& OpenSuSE currently is not a my daily distro). Though I think I got a
reason sausing the failure, so feel free to ask for more details if the story
seem to be incomplete.

So, my story:

0. Disk partitioning is prepared within other OS (to ensure compatibility w/ M$
software and buggy partitioning tools like Partition Magic with famous
'partition table error' on a good partition table w/ confusing it boundaries).
Partitioning is as follows:

sda
partition1: ntfs
partition2: unformatted
partition3: ext4 (Fedora15 unencrypted /boot)
partition4: extended
partition5: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition6: unformatted
partition7: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition8: ntfs 
partition9: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)

lvm details are omited (note from 1.: lvm is constructed OK only w/ this
partition order) 


1. Install Fedora15 first. Make it use luks partitions. Make it having at least
three encrypted partitions. Make lvm setup within Fedora over these encrypted
partitions using luks devices as a phisical volumes. The lvm setup on my
Fedora15 install was as follows: / , swap & /something are mounted on, for
example partition5,partition7,partition8. Due to Fedora15 buggy beheviour the
/something will fail to mount in setup above if blkid's are changed (1 of 3 lvm
groups will fail to start & fedora will stop booting (asking for a root
intervention). (I can claim that since I've git repo for /etc on that Fedora
exemplar & after rescuing the Fedora my 'git status' reports that commands I
ran made changes in blkid.tab ). The fail depend on sequence to construct lvm
mounts - one of underlining encrypted devices will be not started, thus only
two of 3 required lvm volumes will be available until 'dmsetup' & 'cryptsetup'
utils will be managed to update blkid.tab while getting the things mounted
manually).

2. Well, now lets start OpenSuSE installation. Use custom disk setup. Provide
password for accessing encrypted Fedora15 lvm-based setup.  Mount existing
partitions, including lvm logical volumes from configuration found by a clever
setup program inside Fedora. Now I did as follows: deleted existing partition 6
and create new two on a free space arrived, then managed them to be /boot & /
(the / is encrypted). Now the partitions were renumbered. Partitions 7,8,9 
(look 0. above) now are numbered as 6,7,8 and Fedora15 now waits for a root
user to fix lvm constructing problems.

The partitioning now looks like this:
sda
partition1: ntfs
partition2: unformatted
partition3: ext4 (Fedora15 unencrypted /boot)
partition4: extended
partition5: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition6: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition7: ntfs 
partition8: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition9: ext4 (open_suse /boot partition)
partition10: open_suse_created_encrypted_phisical_volume ('d be encrypted '/')

lvm details are omited (note from 1.: lvm is constructed OK only w/ this
partition order) 

3. After above I confirmed that I finished w/ all my configuration tasks &
surely willing to continue w/ installation.

4. The installation failed on step 'prepare disks'. After some errors I aborted
install within dialog '"Ignore error & continue" or "Abort installation"',
since I was not sure that it will modify partitions I inteded it to do.

For me the root of the failure is dependency on lvm setup from other
distribution, that is only OK with an unmodified partition order.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install some linux w/ lvm, make installation in a manner when changing
partition numbers will make LVM fail to start on that 'some Linux' (details
above in 'Details' section).

2. Run OpenSuSE installation, use custom partitioning & make it mount the lvm
partitions from 'some Linux' (installed as noted in 1. above).

3. After getting the 'some Linux' LVM mounted within OpenSuSE installation
delete & add partitions - the process of add/delete must reorder partion
numbers in way that will broke LVM construction under 'some Linux' (as noted in
1) . 

4. The installation will fail after confirming 'start installation' due to disk
prepare erros.

The reason of the failure is dependency on lvm setup from other distribution,
that is only OK with an unmodified partition order.
Actual Results:  
The installation produce errors preparing disk partitioning & asks user to
inore or abort. 

Since it's not clear what's going on under 'error SOMENUMBER_IDONTREMEMBER' (no
good explaining logs on other consoles) the best bet is to abort & restart.


Expected Results:  
The installation should be able to manage such lvm construction errors gently: 

1. Ensure that root partition is not failing to be constructed & mounted.

2. tell user that the following partitions (list volumes) are now fail to be
constructed & will be removed from list of partitions to mount - he/she should
manage this after installation (there seem to be no easy way to fix this within
install time)

It would be very nice to be able to export at least software selected to some
file on some media - detailed software selection is most time consuming &
should be saveble part of installation work.

I set severity to Major since:

*) this is wrong idea to fail due to assumptions that sourced from untrusted
(not made by us) configuration will be OK after partition modifications made by
us. By 'us' I mean 'the installation programm'.

*) If triggered, this bug leads to wasting all work done while configuring this
installation.

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