When starting a node with multiple non-RAID hard disks, GRUB installation can pause waiting for user input at the console

[Rod Smith]

When a computer has multiple non-RAID hard disks, a MAAS installation will sometimes (but not always) pause late in the installation phase to ask the user where to install GRUB. (See the attached screen shot.) For a network installation tool like MAAS, this is obviously a serious problem. I'm also attaching /var/log/syslog from the system being installed, at the point when the GRUB installation prompt appeared on the screen.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Which installer are you using, fast, or d-i?

[Rod Smith (rodsmith)]

d-i

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Does this happen with the fast installer? We are considering deprecating d-i anyway.

[Rod Smith (rodsmith)]

On one system, I had no problems with the fast installer. With another one, the fast installer installs OK, but then tries to boot from the second disk (which on my test had a leftover installation that booted instead of the MAAS-created one). If you think that's a sufficiently different symptom, I can file a new bug report for it.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

That one is possibly related to the bug you reported here https://bugs.launchpad.net/maas/+bug/1307614 but for sure it's separate to the d-i problem.

[Rod Smith (rodsmith)]

I doubt if it's related to that bug -- at least, not closely enough to be meaningful. (Both relate to device enumeration, though.) After experimenting a bit to ascertain what was happening, I've opened a new one (bug 1319966).