Boot fails when you use hex code in /etc/fstab

[Agustín Dall'Alba]

Binary package hint: mountall

I use \040 in /etc/fstab to have a white space in the mount path. Since Dec 24th update this crashes mountall and makes boot fail. However, the device mounts correctly.
Reproduction:

~# ls /media
cdrom cdrom0 cdrom1

~# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda3 during installation
UUID=8291bc13-62e6-4ee8-944d-e4963e9497db / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=786aa4a5-4556-44ff-83d9-e51a786540b0 none swap sw 0 0

/dev/sda2 /media/Windows\0407 ntfs-3g

~# mountall --debug
http://paste.ubuntu.com/348204/

~# mount
/dev/sda3 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/agustin/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
/dev/sda2 on /media/Windows 7 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)

-- /dev/sda2 was mounted correctly

~# ls /media
cdrom cdrom0 cdrom1 Windows 7
-- Sometimes a empty folder called 'Windows\0407' is created

It seems that mountall correctly mounts the partition on its place but then it checks the path "as is" and fails because Windows\0407 is not a mount point.

== Regression details ==
Discovered in version: mountall 2.2
Last known good version: mountall 2.3

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Dec 28 14:36:43 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: mountall 2.3
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=es_AR.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=es_AR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-9.13-generic
SourcePackage: mountall
Tags: lucid
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-9-generic x86_64

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

If this crashes mountall, you should have a crash report to file - please do that.

[Agustín Dall'Alba (agusdallalba)]

Sorry, this is the first bug I post. What I am supossed to do? The crash makes the system unbootable.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Unfortunately without the crash report, it's impossible to debug this further. This should have appeared in /var/crash (and given you a popup on login)

[Agustín Dall'Alba (agusdallalba)]

I forgot about this, sorry. The crash report doesn't show up in /var/crash, but I now know how to use gdb. I will send the files tomorrow

[Agustín Dall'Alba (agusdallalba)]

The bug is not there. It seems it was solved since I posted this bug.

[OmegaPhil (omegaphil)]

This remains a bug. I was very lucky to realise this was what caused it, as it resulted in no video feed (kernel or X windows) and no SSH access, the most shockingly poor position Ive been in so far (haven't used Linux for that long so I was lucky to be able to take control of such a situation).

Is this what a kernel panic looks like?

The fstab manpage talks about using '\040' to represent spaces in paths and labels, so I used this - works perfectly after boot, but complete death during boot.

As a workaround, I have replaced all spaces with underscores.

When the failure happens, NOTHING is logged. I was shocked to see nothing in all the various files in /var/log, which I dont really understand. There is nothing in '/var/crash'.

The problem is trivial to reproduce - happens every time. A detail that may be of use - my OS drive is RAID 1'd via mdadm, courtesy of the Ubuntu Server installer wizard.

===========================================================

All packages uptodate.

Ubuntu Server 10.04

uname -a: Linux 2.6.32-24-server #39-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 28 06:21:40 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

mountall version: 2.15

[Agustín Dall'Alba (agusdallalba)]

I've just noticed that the bug is here again. Just that now it's nearly impossible to tell that THIS is what is causing the problem unless you boot without splash and quiet, and run 'mountall' as root in verbose mode. Otherwise you face with "mountall: Event failed"

As a workaround you can make a symlink of your path with spaces to a path without spaces, and put the "unspaced" path in /etc/fstab. But this is ugly and may cause additional problems.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Are you still experiencing this issue with the latest version of mountall in the final version of lucid ?

[Agustín Dall'Alba (agusdallalba)]

It works perfectly now. I'm using mountall 2.15