Installer hangs trying to install SILO boot loader

[Jeff Balderson]

Binary package hint: debian-installer

Steps to reproduce:

1) Do a network install using http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/installer-sparc/20070308ubuntu33/images/sparc64/netboot/2.6/boot.img
2) "Go Back" at an appropriate point and Switch to "low" priority
3) Partition drives normally (my normal config includes RAID drives, but I tested this with non-raided and met the same hang).
4) When the installer gets to the "Install SILO Boot Loader" step of the install, it hangs (possibly indefinitely).
5) From another console, I killed '/usr/bin/perl /usr/sbin/siloconfig', and the installer complained of the failure.
6) I then proceeded with "finish installation without boot loader", at which point it hung again,
7) I listed the processes again and noticed that something launched the SILO installer again. I killed it again and it completed the install
8) Upon reboot, it doesn't look like SILO got installed correctly.

This system doesn't have a CD-ROM, so I can't test the CD-ROM based installer to see if I have similar issues.

Syslog is attached.
Note in the attached syslog that I've killed the PID for '/usr/bin/perl /usr/sbin/siloconfig' after letting it sit for 5 minutes or so with no activity. You'll see several attempts along these lines.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Thanks for your report. This is also bug 194032.