Initial installer run on Dell XPS13 (9343), crash while creating recovery media

[Lurchman]

Newly-received Dell XPS 13 (9343), UK model CNX4313 with Ubuntu 14.04 pre-installed.

Very first power-on, and running through the initial 'setup' process. Inserted a 2GB USB Flash drive, and chose to create recovery media. Process started chugging away, and then suddenly crashed for no apparent reason.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: ubiquity 2.18.8kittyhawk2somerville2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-37.64bdw1-generic 3.13.11.7
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-37-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Apr 30 15:08:18 2015
DistributionChannelDescriptor:
 # This is a distribution channel descriptor
 # For more information see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DistributionChannelDescriptor
 canonical-oem-somerville-trusty-amd64-20140620-0
InstallCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz.efi boot=casper automatic-ubiquity noprompt quiet splash --
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-04-24 (6 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty" - Build amd64 LIVE Binary 20140620-04:25
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8
 TERM=linux
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
mtime.conffile..etc.init.ubiquity.conf: 2015-04-24T13:24:35.518107

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Exception during installation:
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: Traceback (most recent call last):
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 1801, in <module>
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: install.run()
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 79, in wrapper
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: func(self)
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 208, in run
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: self.configure_plugins()
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 587, in configure_plugins
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: self.run_plugin(plugin)
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 561, in run_plugin
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: ret = inst.install(self.target, PluginProgress(self.db))
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins/dell-recovery.py", line 229, in install
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: fname)
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/Dell/recovery_common.py", line 734, in dbus_sync_call_signal_wrapper
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: dbus_iface.get_dbus_method(func)(*args, **kwargs)
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 137, in __call__
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: **keywords)
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 584, in call_async
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: message.append(signature=signature, *args)
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py: TypeError: Expected a string or unicode object
Apr 30 14:07:55 dell-desktop /plugininstall.py:

[Lurchman (k-launchpad-loowis-durge-org)]

So, after filing this bug report (and being left with only a top menu-bar and no side applications-menu) I rebooted the laptop, and was able to login as the user I created during the setup before it crashed (although there was also still an "OEM" user listed as an option, which I didn't use).

I tried running the Dell Recovery program again to create a recovery USB stick, and it again crashed!

So then I installed all the pending updates (which itself needed an 'sudo apt-get install -f' to complete properly), did a reboot, logged in, and again tried running the Dell Recovery program. This time it worked! It "did it's stuff", and then tried writing the recovery image to my 2GB USB drive, but complained it didn't have enough space.
Turns out that my 2GB USB flash drive was only 1.9GB, but the recovery image needed 2.1GB of space. (I've got no idea if this was the reason for the original crash?)

So then I found up a 16GB USB flash drive and installed the recovery image to that instead. All worked fine.

Then I used the Dell Recovery program to reset the laptop to the factory state (restored from the recovery partition - worked flawlessly). Rebooted and ran through the initial setup process again, this time choosing *not* to make a recovery USB disk during the setup, and it all worked absolutely fine (the OEM user from the previous attempt no longer existed). And I was able to install all the pending software updates without needing to do 'sudo apt-get install -f'.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

This issue is caused by a mistake in the Dell factory. It's been fixed in the dell-recovery package that you will get from APT updates. It will be fixed in the factory too (but this will take some more time).