Intrepid: Netboot locks up at 2% installing the selected edubuntu desktop

[Dave Morley]

RELEASE: Intrepid
CD/DVD VARIANT: netboot mini.iso 64/32 bit
ISO BUILD: 20081026

SYMPTOMS: Selecting edubuntu on a netboot mini.iso install freezes at 2% of the install.

CAUSE: Unknown

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1/ Install from mini.iso
2/ After the base install select edubuntu from the list of desktops
3/ Watch the install lock up at 2%

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

Confirmed.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I can see from the log on Alt-F4 that it is actually working - it just doesn't seem to be updating the progress bar for some unknown reason.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

It appears that apt doesn't write dlstatus messages to Status-Fd if given the -q option. I'm not sure whether we should have pkgsel stop passing -q, or fix this; however it does seem a little odd for -q to control non-user-visible messages as well as general wittering on stderr.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Release notes text added:

== Slow start to "Select and install software" step in text-mode installer ==

The "Select and install software" step in the text-mode install CD may appear to hang at a low single-digit percentage. This is particularly the case for netboot installations, where there will be no progress b
ar updates at all while downloading packages. This is due to a fault in the interaction between the installer and `apt-get`, which was diagnosed too late to fix for Ubuntu 8.10: [[https://launchpad.net/bugs/290234|bug 290234]].

You can find out whether the installer is making progress by pressing Alt-F4 to switch to the logging console; Alt-F1 switches back to the main installer. (If you are installing in QEMU or KVM, be careful to press Ctrl+Alt or click in the window to have the emulator grab focus before pressing Alt-F4, as otherwise this will close the emulator!)

[Igor Nikolic (i-nikolic)]

Hello, just attempted to neetboot a Samsung NC10 off a ubuntu 8.04 AMD64, with a i386 net image.

it hangs, and I cant access anything.

Any suggestions on how to provide you with some error logs ?

[Twig (pfirth)]

This is also affecting Jaunty alpha 6 although it is locking up at 6%. If I switch to another console, I can see the progress of the installation.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Having looked into the necessary change in apt, it's quite trivial, so I don't think it's necessary to change pkgsel. I've put up an apt branch for review.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package apt - 0.7.20.2ubuntu5

---------------
apt (0.7.20.2ubuntu5) jaunty; urgency=low

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * cmdline/acqprogress.cc:
    - Call pkgAcquireStatus::Pulse even if quiet, so that we still get
      dlstatus messages on the status-fd (LP: #290234).

  [ Michael Vogt ]
  * debian/apt.cron.daily:
    - do not clutter cron mail with bogus gconftool messages
      (LP: #223502)
    - merge fix for cache locking from debian (closes: #459344)
    - run update-apt-xapian-index (with ionice) to ensure that
      the index is up-to-date when synaptic is run (LP: #288797)

 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:22:28 +0200