15.04 installer hangs in partitioner during something else

[Bill Miller]

In both Ubuntu and Lubuntu 15.04, when performing a "Something Else" install, the installer hangs when trying to format /.

I was trying a Something Else install on 32 bit. I asked to format sda1 as ext4 and mount at /. I asked to not format sda3 and mount at /home. I asked to use sda5 as swap. Installer just stopped with no hard drive or CD activity. No formatting was performed.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1447600/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

  apport-collect 1447600

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Waz (paviluf)]

Same problem here. If I select Kubuntu manual disk installation and try to format "sdaX" for "/" the installation is stuck at 33%

The Kubuntu 15.04 installation was successful only when selecting "sdaX" as "/" without format the partition.

[Obi1Kenobi (hatespam00-bugrep)]

Same problem here. Basically I cannot install Kubuntu 15.04. Same symptom: installer hangs at 33% while preparing the ext4 file system. I currently have KUbuntu 14.10 and was trying to format the root partition and put 15.04 instead. Noticed that the installer didn't actually do any changes to that partition as was able to boot 14.10 without a hitch after my failed installation attempt. So apparently it doesn't write anything on selected root partition while being stuck at "33%".

Hope this helps and you fix it soon so we can all install 15.04.

Thank you.

[girisha (girishad)]

The installation hanged since I selected the something else option. Restarted since the installation made no progress for many hours. Now I don't have a grub :(

[girisha (girishad)]

as a work around, I used gparted, formatted the partition I want to use for "/". afterwards in the installation program I selected the "something else option". marked the formatted partition to refer to "/" but un-ticked the format option. the installation proceeded without a problem after that :)

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

As Brian mentioned earlier, there isn't enough information to deal with this bug just yet. Could someone having this run "apport-collect 1447600" or attach /var/log/syslog *from the installer* when this happens? You can do this by having a terminal open beside ubiquity in the "Try Ubuntu before install" option of the CD.

We only need one proper log for this, so it's unnecessary for multiple people to run apport-collect in the installer; but we do need to know what/why it's stalling, which is something that will show up in the logs.

Also, while I appreciate that this is an annoying bug, I don't think it qualifies as "Critical", so I'm reducing it to High.

[Bill Miller (wbmilleriii)]

I just tried reproducing it in a virtual machine and the problem didn't
happen. I don't have a free physical machine to try it on (it was a
physical machine where it happened to me in the first place).

Bill

On 05/29/2015 08:14 AM, Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre wrote:
> As Brian mentioned earlier, there isn't enough information to deal with
> this bug just yet. Could someone having this run "apport-collect
> 1447600" or attach /var/log/syslog *from the installer* when this
> happens? You can do this by having a terminal open beside ubiquity in
> the "Try Ubuntu before install" option of the CD.
>
> We only need one proper log for this, so it's unnecessary for multiple
> people to run apport-collect in the installer; but we do need to know
> what/why it's stalling, which is something that will show up in the
> logs.
>
> Also, while I appreciate that this is an annoying bug, I don't think it
> qualifies as "Critical", so I'm reducing it to High.
>
> ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Critical => High
>

[Waz (paviluf)]

I have attached /var/log/syslog
I hope it's the right thing

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

@jeremy, I see nothing wrong in the syslog file you attached. Are there any messages showing up in the ubiquity window? Could you take a screenshot?

[Bill Miller (wbmilleriii)]

When this happened to me, there were no messages. The process just stopped.

On 06/02/2015 08:32 AM, Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre wrote:
> @jeremy, I see nothing wrong in the syslog file you attached. Are there
> any messages showing up in the ubiquity window? Could you take a
> screenshot?
>

[Waz (paviluf)]

There were no messages, the installer just hangs at 33% while preparing the ext4 file system and didn't do any changes to the partition.

[Waz (paviluf)]

Maybe something wrong with KDE "partitionmanager" ?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1443692

[Waz (paviluf)]

Since it's affect all flavors it's probably something else.

[Waz (paviluf)]

Any news about this problem ?
Do you need more infos ?

[Uwe Geuder (ubuntulp-ugeuder)]

I get also bitten by this problem when trying to install ubuntu-15.04-server-amd64.iso in a virtual machine.

If I select LVM the installation hangs when it tries to format /boot as ext2

If I select full disk without LVM the installation hangs when it tries to format / (rootfs) as ext4

I can change to a busy box shell in virtual console 2. Command apport-collect is not in the path.

I checked dmesg but did not see anything bad.

Looking at the output of "ps" shows that the mkfs.ext4 is hanging (status sleeping). Obviously the installer cannot do very much if mkfs.ext4 never completes.

strace does not seem to be available in this environment, so I am a bit out of ideas how to debug where the mkfs.ext4 hangs.

[Uwe Geuder (ubuntulp-ugeuder)]

I cross-checked that the problem does not occur with ubuntu-14.04-server-amd64.iso (same VM, excactly same virtual disk)

I also found a work-around:

1. When mkfs hangs open a console on virtual console 2
2. Use "ps" to see how mkfs was called exactly and what's the pid
3. kill -9 <pid>
4. call the same mkfs command manually (I used the -v option)
5. Go back to the installer. It will complain that formatting the filesystem has failed. Just continue

(It appears to me that the installer formatted the same filesystem once more after the error. The 2nd attempt (or 3rd if counting the manual one) just worked. I did not debug the details, because it would require one or even several more installations. I was glad it finally worked for me after several hours)

[Uwe Geuder (ubuntulp-ugeuder)]

I wrote:

Obviously the installer cannot do very much if mkfs.ext4 never completes.

And I intended to write:

So the bug must be in e2fsprogs (or even in the kernel)

However, thinking one more time I don't think either of those statements is necessarily true.
The output of mkfs is somehow redirected to the installer GUI (ncurses in my case).
So I guess this redirection could cause a deadlock, such that mkfs waits forever
to write some output to the installer.

[Uwe Geuder (ubuntulp-ugeuder)]

Now I came up with an idea how to investigate whether it is a deadlock between mkfs and the GUI.

Under /proc/<pid>/stack one can see the call stack in the kernel space of the process. So if the mkfs process hung in some do_write call and the log capturing process in some do_read call that would confirm my theory of a deadlock. Or the stacks might reveal something else.

So I tried the installation once more (actually twice), but according to Murphy both attempts went through the formatting without hanging. Yesterday I had nearly 10 attempts, which hung until I found the work-around. Or my work-around was just random luck...

Anyway if anybody gets the problem again she or he might report the stacks of mkfs and the log reading process (don't recall the exact name, saw it yesterday)

[Waz (paviluf)]

I really hope this will be fixed for Ubuntu 15.10.

[Waz (paviluf)]

Any news on this ?
The release date of Ubuntu 15.10 is coming fast.

[Waz (paviluf)]

I start to think that won't be fixed anytime soon

[Dmitry Cidious (cidious)]

The bug still appears on Ubuntu 15.10 beta 64bit.

[Marek Stasiak (marecki)]

Ok I tried to install 15.04 x64 and 15.10 x64 for two days without success. Then I started looking for similar problem and landed at this bug report.

I had clean HDD without any partitions, used .iso images installed on pendrives by USB universal installer, unetbootin or that default ubuntu tool, same result everywhere. No error alert, no nothing, installation is not moving forward after I enter the password for full-system encryption. Then I tried solution #17 by Uwe Geuder and it worked (thanks!). In my case I had to do this:

[installation didn't move after I wrote down full-system encryption password]
1. go to virtual console 2
2. search for mkfs process (for me it was 'mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1')
3. sudo kill -9 pid of that process
4. execute the same command: sudo mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1 [had to confirm y/n]
5. go back to gui by ctrl+alt+F7
6. kill ubiquity process [freezed installation]
7. start new installation

which is basically 1:1 #17 solution and I successfully completed installation.

Don't know when the problem lays. I can reproduce it easily, but there seems to be no errors to collect from logs.

[Benedikt (en-ko)]

It seems the problem is caused by the embedded "KDE-Partitionsverwaltung" (partition manager). When I tried to delete and to make a new (the same) partition using "KDE-Partitionsverwaltung" without installing process an error occurs.

So I started partition magic, gparted created a new partition table and created the partitions again, no error. Since this time no problem by installing the system anymore.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1447600

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

Might this be a duplicate of bug #1361951?

[Waz (paviluf)]

You are right it's the same bug

[Maraschin (carlo-maraschin)]

I got the same problem with 15.10 daily 2015-10-09 ... :-/

[Steven Usdansky (usdanskys)]

Same problem with 16.04 daily 2015-10-27

[Derifo1-t (derifo1-t)]

I've been encountering it for a long time and the only solution had been to go back to 12.04 and upgrade from there to the latest version (several upgrades). I even dumped Ubuntu for Opensuse for several months after buying a new ssd because I thought my hdd was fried only to encounter the same issue.

I stumbled on this post this even after getting stuck again while trying to do a clean install of 15.10. But instead of reverting to 12.04 after multiple failed attempt, I decided to try to delete my partition with gparted, then reboot, and recreate the partition with the Ubuntu partitioner, and I was surprised that it worked. I tried it several times just to be sure. It worked each time.