Installer hangs on first step after clicking 'Forward'

[Stephen Rees-Carter]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

I just tried to log this bug, but it must not have worked....

Running the Alpha 3 Live disk of Natty, I went to install after going through "Use Ubuntu". On the first step, which checks for internet, power, and disk space, I clicked the 'Forward' button at the bottom. The installer just sits there with the Back and Forward buttons greyed out not doing anything.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu Natty (development branch)
Release: 11.04
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-cache policy ubiquity
ubiquity:
  Installed: 2.5.22
  Candidate: 2.5.22
  Version table:
 *** 2.5.22 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[Stephen Rees-Carter (valorin)]

Any word on when this is likely to be fixed, or any work arounds I can use?
I am stuck with a broken Natty install and can't do any more testing until I can reinstall...

[Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure)]

@Stephen
This doesn't answer your question about when this bug will be fixed...but have you considered:

(1) Attempting to install from the Alternate Install CD? (Or does that exhibit a corresponding problem to this one?)

(2) Attempting to install from an older CD (such as one of the numbered Alpha release CD's, i.e. Alpha 1, Alpha 2, or Alpha 3), then upgrading the newly installed system's packages?

(3) Attempting to repair your existing broken installation, upgrade its packages, and then continue testing with it?

[Stephen Rees-Carter (valorin)]

@Eliah
Thanks for the suggestions, I do appreciate it :)

I went looking for the Alpha2 CD's but couldn't find them - I assume I just wasn't checking the right places. As for the Alternate CD, it was next on my list to try. That said, I've managed to resurrect my current install - it was my user that was corrupted so I used the classic desktop to make a new user and then went from there.

[Stephen Rees-Carter (valorin)]

@Eliah
I managed to break my install badly by playing around with Gnome-Shell... yep, my own silly fault.

Anyway, I downloaded the Alternate CD for Alpha 3, and it won't install either. I go through the prompts until I get to the Partitioner, which hangs on 52%...

Do you know where I can download Alpha 2, or a newer version than Alpha3 to install?

[Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure)]

@Stephen
You broke it by playing around with the GNOME Shell? Do you mean you broke it playing with the GNOME Terminal?

If you in fact broke it playing around with the GNOME *Shell*, you can probably work around the breakage by creating a new user (if necessary from the command-line, with the "adduser" command; make sure to add them to the "admin" group, so that they can run stuff as root with sudo/gksu/gksudo/kdesudo/whatever, and so that they can perform administrative actions in programs that use PolicyKit).

Most breakages can be fixed. I invite you to open a question at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu, and get help with your problem. If you create a question and post a link to it here, I'll try to attend to it (if nobody else does first). Extensive discussion of the breakage, however--since it doesn't seem to relate to the topic of this bug--should be avoided here. I'm rather pushing over that line myself, in this post (but I don't want to sacrifice efficiency to propriety).

If you do need to reinstall, then daily builds, including "daily" (which is the daily alternate CD) and "daily-live" (which is the daily desktop CD), are newer than Alpha 3 (at this point, considerably newer), and besides the benefit of new bug fixes, it's good to (try to) install from them because then you can report bugs in the installer (or live CD environment) as you find them:

Daily desktop CD: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/
Daily alternate CD: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily/current/

I recommend going for the desktop (i.e. daily-live) CD.

And if you install from the daily live CD and you find that this bug no longer occurs, then you should definitely post here about that!

If you do need an older build of Natty, then Alpha 2 would probably be the way to go, but I'm not sure if (or where) that download is still offered. That would also be a good thing to ask about at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu (in a *separate* question from any question you post about fixing your present problem). I strongly suspect that it's still offered somewhere...but if not, I do have a copy of some of some of the Alpha 1 CD images, and after the aforementioned preferable alternatives have been exhausted, I would be pleased to set up some way of sending it to you.

[Stephen Rees-Carter (valorin)]

@Eliah, I mean gnome3. I tried the PPA and compiling it myself, so most of my themes are screwed up. I would just prefer to install a clean version to do more testing than go through the fun of removing packages and stuff. Pure laziness.

I will give the daily-live CD a go, and see if the installer works for me and let you know :)

[Stephen Rees-Carter (valorin)]

Well, the daily-live disk got me past the first step :D
But, then it crashed when I was installing: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/741383

Ah well... I'll wait for a new daily and test it, or see what sort of response I get in that bug report I guess.

[Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure)]

@Robert
Can you see if the bug (this one, the one this bug report is about) has gone away for you as well, when you use the latest daily live? If it has, then I think we should mark this bug as Fix Released (or Invalid, or find the bug where the fix is documented and mark this as a duplicate).

@Stephen
It may be that your bug report (for bug 741383) contains sufficient information...but I wanted to make sure you know that you can boot up, click Try Ubuntu, run the installer from the icon on the desktop, and then use ubuntu-bug (which launches apport) to report the bug, passing ubiquity's process ID number as the argument (as explained at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs). That will automatically attach lots of useful information to your bug report (including but lot limited to the syslog and partman files).

[Stephen Rees-Carter (valorin)]

@Eliah
I didn't realize I could do that with running applications. I will try and cause the bug again and use that method. Is there a way to tell ubuntu-bug which bug I want the information to go onto, or will it only create a new bug? (In which case I will mark my current one as Invalid)

[Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure)]

@Stephen: Correction: "...including but NOT limited to..."

[Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure)]

@Stephen
Apport (which is the program that gets invoked, with whatever is the most appropriate user interface, when you run ubuntu-bug) will automatically start the bug reporting process, specifying the Launchpad package name that corresponds to the process whose ID you pass it as its argument. ubuntu-bug can be invoked in other ways too (for example, automatically when there is a crash, or manually by passing an executable name or dpkg package name), and it automatically selects (what is almost always) the right package in those cases as well.

I strongly recommend reading https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs carefully. It is a great resource. Every bug report you submit after that will be better and stronger than before. (In particular, you're about to submit a new bug report for bug 471383, I'd recommend reading that page first.)

Also, in cases where you submit a better report for a bug you've previously reported, it's generally preferable to mark the older, worse bug report as a duplicate of the newer, better one, rather than marking it as Invalid.

(Sorry I didn't reply before. When I submitted by "Correction" message, I had not yet read your latest post.)

[Stephen Rees-Carter (valorin)]

@Robert

Are you still experiencing this bug?
The daily-live builds (http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/) are now working for me.

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

I haven't had the opportunity to test it yet, but as the Natty Beta 1 comes out (hopefully today), I'll grab it and install it, as I want to test it on my laptop too, so I'll respond after that.

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

It worked yesterday on my laptop, so I guess this should be set as Fix released or Invalid.

[Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure)]

Actually, I've been looking into the issue a bit more since I last posted here, and that the issue is gone for both of you, along with the other information here, pretty well indicates that this is actually (a duplicate of) bug 729394.