Partman freezing at 52%, only in Czech version

[BlackSmith]

Hello,

I have problem with partman program when installing Ubuntu. It freezes at 52%, but only in Czech version. It is server edition (9.04, 8.10). I have installed several server PC (Dell 4400, 2x 6650) and many ordinary PCs, the error occurs even in installation in VirtualBox. In installator I have always chosen Czech language and USA keyboard layout. In the dialog of disk partitioning I have chosen "Automatic with LVM" or "Custom". I have created several partitions, but very often all of the sudden a disk partitioner started to load and froze on 52%. I did not manage to find out when precisely it starts, it happened at different events (adding new partition, setting partition properties, ...). It did not help to kill the partitioner, it always started again. PC restart did not help, I always ended on 52%. In the end I was forced to skip disk partitioning and have a standard root and swap partition.

When I chose english language in the installer everything went well. The problem is really only when selecting Czech (and maybe other non-english) language.

Martin Korbel

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Translated to english, please ignore czech comments below. Bug reporter doesn't speak english well.

[Kamil Páral (kamil.paral)]

Toto se bude muset nahlásit oproti danému programu, překladatelé s tím nic neudělají. Mám ovšem problém zjistit, co to ten partitioner je za program. V seznamu balíků nic takového není:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=default&section=all&arch=any&searchon=names&keywords=partit
Můžeš zjistit, kterým příkazem se program spouští a do kterého balíku patří (dpkg -S <příkaz>)?

[BlackSmith (black-smith)]

Jedna se o program /bin/partman.

[BlackSmith (black-smith)]

Bohužel po nainstalovaní ubuntu jsem tento program již nenašel a při instalaci není ještě dpkg nainstalován, abych ho mohl použít a zjistit balíček.

[Kamil Páral (kamil.paral)]

Bug translated to english, reassigning to ubiquity package.

[Scott Inderlied (scott-ok-it)]

My 9.04 Server version is doing it in English. I'm hitting this now after previously setting up ext4 formatting on several lvm volumes. (i've reinstalled several times tonight, for various reasons) The ext4 is the only difference between now and when it wouldn't freeze.

[Scott Inderlied (scott-ok-it)]

I was able to circumvent to freeze on tty1 by launching /bin/partman on tty2. It popped up, and rapidly brought me to the partition editing, etc screen. Scanning is still frozen at 52% on tty1. Hopefully i can carry on in tty2 and finish.

[Scott Inderlied (scott-ok-it)]

I had to kill all the processes related to the install using one of the TTY's. I then relaunched the setup menu and was able to get through the partitioner. I had this problem much more frequently when i was setting up previously created LVM's formatted with ext4.

[Travis H. (travis+w-launchpad-net)]

I'm hitting this on a brand new Asus EEE PC 1215n, in the alternate installer.

I'm running off a USB drive (I've tried two).

It looks like it's a freeze in partman.

The exact steps I took involved deleting an empty NTFS partition - at which point partman stopped at 46%.

Then I deleted a "hidden" NTFS (W95) partition used by Express Gate, and after that partman froze at 52%.

Googling around, this appears to be a common problem, with reports in various Debian-derived distros since 8.04 or so.

This is a particularly annoying problem.

It did not affect my other, identical machine where I installed via Ubiquity (or whatever the normal installer is).

[Travis H. (travis+w-launchpad-net)]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I'm using 10.10, English version, 32-bit (on a 64-bit machine with EEFI).

My previous install which went fine was 64-bit 10.04 or 10.10 English version.

This bug needs to be edited to reflect that it affects all languages, and a variety of distros, graphical (apparently) and alternate installer.

[Travis H. (travis+w-launchpad-net)]

/var/log/partman showed lines up to S35dump, then stopped.

Another data point; the Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit graphical installer (normal ISO) appears to be working just fine.

So perhaps installing the 32-bit version on a 64-bit machine is the problem, or perhaps it's specific to the alternate installer.

Or perhaps it's the weird partitioning layout of the disk.

I should also mention I'm using unetbootin to make the disks, though I'm not sure it matters.

Please take this report seriously, as it's from a person who has eight Linux machines, has done kernel development, and is not usually troubled by simple matters that trip up noobs. Let me know if there's anything I can do to diagnose it for you.

Also, another oddity; fdisk reports in blocks of 1024 bytes, not 512, and the graphical depiction of the amount of disk allocated to Ubuntu has been wrong in many different ways. Maybe it's something to do with the 250GB laptop drive, or maybe not.

[Travis H. (travis+w-launchpad-net)]

More data; the alternate, 64-bit installer worked.

So it appears to be a problem using 32-bit installs on a 64-bit system.

Possibly the fact that it uses EEFI (a BIOS on the disk) may have something to do with it. But maybe not.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

If you can still reproduce this, please attach your log files.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]