The Installer Crashed

[Howard Kern]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

When first going into screen 7 ("How do you want to configure your disk space?"), the installer announces that it's attempting to launch a partitioning program, hangs for a few seconds, then crashes. If it helps, I'm trying to install xubuntu Herd 2 onto a dual-booting machine, that already has xubuntu 6.10 on it, with /home/ on a reiser partition and everything else (i.e. /) on an XFS partition (I'd lilke to keep /home and re-format and install into the XFS partition where / currently lives).

Here's the trackback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 185, in ?
    main()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 180, in main
    install(args[0])
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 56, in install
    ret = wizard.run()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py", line 310, in run
    self.process_step()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py", line 867, in process_step
    self.process_autopartitioning()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py", line 922, in process_autopartitioning
    choice = self.get_autopartition_choice()[0]
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py", line 1620, in get_autopartition_choice
    raise AssertionError, "no active autopartitioning choice"
AssertionError: no active autopartitioning choice

I notice in the above the mentioning of autopartitioning; it may be pertinent to note that at no point does it ask me if I want to autopartition, or set my partitions up manually, or any of the other usual choices: it just launches right into the partitioning tool.

[Howard Kern (howekern)]

syslog attached

[David Tansey (djtansey)]

I believe I've experienced the same crash. This is the message I get:

Installer crashed

We're sorry; the installer crashed. Please file a new bug report at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+filebug (do not attach your details to any existing bug) and a developer will attend to the problem as soon as possible. To help the developers understand what went wrong, include the following detail in your bug report, and attach the files /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 185, in ?
    main()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 180, in main
    install(args[0])
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 56, in install
    ret = wizard.run()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py", line 310, in run
    self.process_step()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py", line 867, in process_step
    self.process_autopartitioning()
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py", line 922, in process_autopartitioning
    choice = self.get_autopartition_choice()[0]
  File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py", line 1620, in get_autopartition_choice
    raise AssertionError, "no active autopartitioning choice"
AssertionError: no active autopartitioning choice

[David Tansey (djtansey)]

Another note, I got a popup error before ubiquity crashed -

(dialog title) Failed to partition the selected disk
(in dialog) This probably happened because the selected disk or free space is too small to be automatically partitioned.

After clicking OK it waits for a little while then crashes.

I am using the herd2 CD, x86.
The computer is currently without OS, if I remember correctly. It might have a blank NTFS partition taking up the whole disk.

[David Tansey (djtansey)]

Just ran gparted from a terminal and deleted my ntfs partition (and replaced it with an ext3 partition and a swap partition.) I ran the installer again, and it worked. So the disk being ntfs is a problem.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

No, it's unrelated to NTFS, although you couldn't have been expected to guess the actual reason (unpartitioned space present on any disk). This is also bug 76976, and has since been fixed; run 'sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install ubiquity' before starting the installer to pick up the fix.