Intrepid live CD installer fails on existing installation

[Luke Plant]

Having installed Intrepid once on my machine (and subsequently upgraded to Jaunty alpha), I tried to install Intrepid again, repartitioning to make room for a second installation.

The intrepid live CD installer cannot cope with this however.

When I boot, there is a lot of disk activity, which takes a long time, and when the ubuntu desktop appears, it tells me that a device with packages has been found, and asks me if I want to start the package manager (this is very confusing for starters). I'm guessing it has scanned my hard disk and found packages (as you'd expect).

Then, when running the installer, on step 4, which should display the partitions, there is just an empty list.

I'm guessing the problem is due to some automounting quirk:

On the desktop, there is a CD icon. However, in /etc/mtab, the device mounted at /cdrom is /dev/sda1 i.e. my hard drive. Browsing it confirms that it is indeed my hard drive.

Umounting this device fails -- it says "device or resource busy", and I cannot force it any way I try, even though it does not seem that any program is using it.

I've tried the repartitioning tool, but this also shows /dev/sda1 mounted at /cdrom, and fails to unmount it.

I've also tried this from a ubuntu Intrepid installation on a USB stick, and got the same thing. The only thing extra is that when booting, it doesn't use the graphical boot screen, so I see lots of messages, including one about apt-cdrom segfaulting, which is not encouraging.

[Lupine (thelupine)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can't start working on it yet, because your description didn't include enough information.

Please include the information requested at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingUbiquity/AttachingLogs as separate attachments by visiting your bug's web page. Thanks in advance.

[Luke Plant (spookylukey)]

Logs added as requested.

However, I'm pretty sure they won't tell you anything particularly useful -- the problem is obviously elsewhere, is to do with some automounting behaviour that happens before the installer even runs.

BTW, this is a regression -- the Hardy installer works just fine - in the end I install Hardy and upgrade to Intrepid.

[Evan (ev)]

This looks like a duplicate of bug 335376, however the "device with packages" comment interests me. Under what scenario (CD, USB disk, some other setup?) did you see your hard drive partition mounted as /cdrom? Are you able to reproduce this?

[Luke Plant (spookylukey)]

I can reproduce this, it happens every time.

The scenario is very simple:

 - install Intrepid on machine (using a CD ROM), using default partitioning.
 - (I then upgraded this installation to Jaunty alpha, but I doubt that makes any difference).
 - then try to install Intrepid again, again using CD ROM.

Result: the main partition from the first installation is mounted as /cdrom. That's it.

If I put the Intrepid live CD onto a USB stick, and boot from that, exactly the same happens, as noted before.

[Evan (ev)]

Ok, please reproduce the bug using the steps you've provided, but when you go to boot the second installation attempt, add the debug option to the CD boot menu, following the instructions in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingCasper . When the live CD finishes booting, please attach /var/log/casper.log to this bug report.

Thanks!

[Luke Plant (spookylukey)]

casper log attached, as requested.

[Victor Vargas (kamus)]

Since this report have a long time without activity, could you check (if is possible) in latest version included in Karmic if this issue is still happening? Thanks in advance.

[Monkey (monkey-libre)]

We'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you, but we haven't heard back from you in a while. Could you please provide the requested information? Thanks!

[Monkey (monkey-libre)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!