Install issues with network install with Ubuntu 14.10

[bugproxy]

Problem description:
====================

Trying to install Ubuntu 14.10 on this machine. I encounter two types of problems during the install. Both instances take place during the :"Starting up the partitioner" step of the install. In both cases the machine crashes or appears to hang.

In the first case I have seen this: (Sorry for the unformatted lines)

  \u250c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2524 Starting up the partitioner \u251c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2510
  \u2502 \u2502
  \u2502 45% \u2502
  \u2502 \u2502
  \u2502 *** stack smashing detected ***: <unknown> terminated \u2502
  \u2502 \u2502
  \u2514\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2518

When I had swapped out disks and tried again by loading Ubuntu 14.04 successfully and then retrying 14.10 I see this (and it appears to hang here)

  \u250c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2524 Starting up the partitioner \u251c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2510
  \u2502 \u2502
  \u2502 45% \u2502
  \u2502 \u2502
  \u2502 Scanning disks... \u2502
  \u2502 \u2502
  \u2514\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2518

The disk size is 600GB and the System also has CAPI-enabled Corsa adapters installed.

I used the following procedure to do the install process (from Mike Hollinger)

wget http://ausgsa.ibm.com/~mchollin/public/surelock/scripts/sapphire_ubuntu_14.10_install.sh
chmod +x sapphire_ubuntu_14.10_install.sh
./sapphire_ubuntu_14.10_install.sh

Other machines in the lab have been successfully installed.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

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[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2014-08-11 14:45 EDT-------
==== State: Open by: kmsolie on 11 August 2014 09:35:00 ====

I am not able to break in to retrieve any type of logs. I cleaned up the messages I see somewhat below getting rid of those characters. This was seen on Ubuntu 14.10 installation.

First problem encountered:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting up the partitioner
45%
*** stack smashing detected ***: <unknown> terminated
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Second case: (apparent hang)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting up the partitioner
45%
Scanning disks...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2014-08-14 15:05 EDT-------
==== State: Assigned by: kmsolie on 14 August 2014 09:54:26 ====

I was able to successfully install Ubuntu 14.04 previously on this machine but not Ubuntu 14.10

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2014-08-20 22:37 EDT-------
Can you dump the existing partition format on all disks? Perhaps the existing partition format is causing it grief.

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2014-08-20 23:05 EDT-------
==== State: Assigned by: kmsolie on 20 August 2014 17:50:38 ====

We have found out as of yesterday that Ubuntu 14.10 LE does not support the existing RAID configuration in this server. This server has a GXP RAID adapter and specialized RAID DASD backplanes.

We have removed that hardware on this server as of today and are in the process of reinstalling on different DASD.

Could this have been the cause of our problem?

[Anton Blanchard (anton-samba)]

This looks like a 4kB sector issue with parted_server:

[ 518.462635] sd 3:0:3:0: [sda] 73242187 4096-byte logical blocks: (299 GB/279 GiB)

So this disk is 4kB logical, not common. And stracing parted_server:

9452 open("/dev/sda", O_RDWR) = 6
...
9452 write(2, "probe label: loop\n", 18) = 18
...
9452 lseek(6, 2097152, SEEK_SET) = 2097152
9452 read(6, "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\"..., 12288) = 12288
9452 open("/dev/tty", O_RDWR|O_NOCTTY|O_NONBLOCK) = 7
9452 writev(7, [{"*** ", 4}, {"stack smashing detected", 23}, {" ***: ", 6}, {"<unknown>", 9}, {" terminated\n", 12}], 5) = 54

[Anton Blanchard (anton-samba)]

I think it's this patch to parted:

From c3e11a7f7bcd93ecc7b9511467909654ee88d86e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Aurelien Jarno <email address hidden>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 17:09:46 +0000
Subject: Add FreeBSD UFS support

+ int8_t buf[512 * 3];
...
+ if (!ped_geometry_read (geom, buf, offsets[i], 3))

Writing 3x4kB sectors to 3x512B of space on the stack will not go well.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package parted - 3.2-5

---------------
parted (3.2-5) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Update freebsd-ufs.patch to handle non-512-byte-sector disks
    (LP: #1355127).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 25 Aug 2014 19:20:11 +0100

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2014-08-26 14:55 EDT-------
==== State: Working by: kmsolie on 26 August 2014 09:38:40 ====

Reducing the severity since problem has been identified.

Original system is not available in the original configuration.

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2014-10-21 22:25 EDT-------
==== State: Verify by: kmsolie on 21 October 2014 17:16:19 ====

Will attempt to verify this on a system with this configuration (which I don't have) - tentatively scheduled for next week.

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2014-11-18 20:31 EDT-------
==== State: Verify by: kmsolie on 18 November 2014 14:03:00 ====

This install was initially performed on a "non-supported" configuration that we test. We have not changed the support statement for this configuration using the GXP adapter.

Closing defect as fixed based on information provided