Cannot preseed partman-auto/disk

[Jo Shields]

The preseed setting "d-i partman-auto/disk /dev/somedrive" should allow you to select which drive to apply a given partman setup to. However, this setting is being ignored by Dapper flight6's installer - regardless of the configured disk, the attached message is shown.

I've tried forcing this through with both "d-i partman-auto/disk /dev/sda" and "d-i partman-auto/init_automatically_partition select Erase entire disk: SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 8.6GB VMware, VMware Virtual S" but it is ignored every time.

Without some method for bypassing this screen, I cannot see a way to create an unattended installer, which is frustrating for me

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Boot with DEBCONF_DEBUG=5 to get a debconf trace in /var/log/syslog, which will tell you what question is being asked. I suspect it's partman-auto/automatically_partition.

[Tim Jackson (tim-jackson)]

this looks basically the same as #39932

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Sorry I didn't attach this yesterday, I was unable to connect to launchpad or security.ubuntu.com yesterday afternoon

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Tim, yes, it looks like a duplication. My mistake.

Colin, I'll get that later - however, it should be noted that both partman-auto/disk and partman-auto/init_automatically_partition were valid options for Breezy, as per http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/breezy/main/installer-i386/current/doc/manual/en/apcs01.html

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I'm afraid the exact form of preseeding is never guaranteed to be stable from release to release.

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Okay, the question being asked is indeed partman-auto/automatically_partition

However, now we touch upon a major usability bug - since partman-auto/automatically_partition is a Select, the only working options available are of the format "Erase entire disk: SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - xx.yGB DRIVELABEL" - meaning I need a new ISO with a new preseed file for every potential different hard disk model number that hardware vendors provide - rather than the somewhat more sensible option of "use the first SCSI/SATA drive please". I'd say it was imperative that partman-auto/disk or similar be read, understood, and suppress the interactive partman-auto/automatically_partition question.

I'm also now having an issue that I'm trying to work around - if I preseed "d-i partman-auto/automatically_partition select Erase entire disk: SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 8.6GB VMware, VMware Virtual S", then I bypass the message that this bug is complaining about - but get an error straight afterwards, complaining that no root device is found (see attached image)

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Attached error only occurs when preseeding partman-auto/automatically_partition

[Tim Jackson (tim-jackson)]

I had tried to preseed the partman-auto/automatically_partition select Erase entire disk: IDE1 master (hda) ... and got the same error. It is interesting that preseeding this doesn't work but entering on the same answer works when not preseeded.

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Okay, so it seems this is definitely now two bugs:

1) Cannot preseed partman-auto with anything even remotely re-usable, as
partman-auto/automatically_partition varies depending on a disk drive's
size, manufacturer & model number

2) Preseeding partman-auto/automatically_partition causes no partitions
to actually be created, leading to "no root partition defined" message

I'd say both are pretty high up the list for fixing before Dapper releases

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

On further inspection, there is a THIRD problem with partman on the current installer.

If one preseeds partman-auto/automatically_partition in any way, installation fails. If one manually selects "Manually edit partition table" when one has a partman-auto/expert_recipe defined, then instalation fails. If one selects "Erase entire disk", then the partman-auto/expert_recipe is completely ignored.

It seems there's simply no way to do anything partition-related from a preseed file.

[Tim Jackson (tim-jackson)]

My experience is different regarding that last report
When I preseed the following

d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/discs/disc0/disc
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string __stuff cut out__
d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
d-i partman/confirm boolean true

after answering "Erase entire disk" to the question, partman-auto picks up the expert_recipe and successfully partitions as requested without further user input.

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

You're right - the combined minimum size of two of my defined partitions was smaller than the maximum capacity of the drive - which caused the installer to go with sda1=/,sda5=swap

Is this the expected behaviour when a partman recipe can't be resolved on a given machine?

[Tim Jackson (tim-jackson)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

directhex wrote:
> You're right - the combined minimum size of two of my defined partitions was smaller than the maximum capacity of the drive - which caused the installer to go with sda1=/,sda5=swap
>
> Is this the expected behaviour when a partman recipe can't be resolved on a given machine?
>

I thought that partman would die and go back to the install menu with an
error when it couldn't resolve the recipe. I have always had to grow at
least one partition to fill the drive to successfully get the recipe to
run on drives of differing sizes.

Tim
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[Jo Shields (directhex)]

The recipe stipulated 5GB for /var and 5GB for / minimum (plus swap and
/boot). The VMware disk I'm working with is 8.6GB - the recipe was
simply ignored as a result

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

partman-auto (45ubuntu10) dapper; urgency=low

  * Rename disk selector question to partman-auto/select_disk, and restore
    partman-auto/disk to its former use in preseeding. Trying to overload
    the two turned out to be too complicated, since people who are
    preseeding partman-auto/disk generally just want to apply a recipe to
    the whole disk, and subsequent questions such as
    partman-auto/automatically_partition are hard to preseed (closes: Malone
    #40186).
  * Adjust the way we ask partman-auto/select_disk to make it easier to
    preseed.
  * Update Ubuntu-specific and previously-untranslated translations from
    Rosetta: Bulgarian, Italian, Kurdish, Latvian.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Fri, 28 Apr 2006 13:15:37 +0100

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Clicked the wrong link. Sorry.

[Carl Karsten (carlfk)]

This works for me in Hardy:

d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
d-i partman-auto/method string regular

Various issues have been brought up in this report - are there any sill outstanding?

[hummus (hummus)]

Carl, could you post the full partitioning/partman section(or whole preseed)? I'm having difficulties using the default 8.04 preseed.txt given on the ubuntu site with your two lines.(resulting in the same directhex image from above).