Bug 751102 - Will fail installing if after selecting 'mount other linux w/ lvm' & blkid changed due to repartitioning
Summary: Will fail installing if after selecting 'mount other linux w/ lvm' & blkid ch...
Status: RESOLVED NORESPONSE
Alias: None
Product: openSUSE 12.1
Classification: openSUSE
Component: Installation (show other bugs)
Version: Final
Hardware: x86-64 openSUSE 12.1
: P5 - None : Major (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: E-mail List
QA Contact: Jiri Srain
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: Bad_Design, easy_fix, tc
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2012-03-07 21:56 UTC by Olli Artemjev
Modified: 2014-12-15 02:43 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Found By: Community User
Services Priority:
Business Priority:
Blocker: No
Marketing QA Status: ---
IT Deployment: ---
chcao: needinfo? (grey-olli)


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Description Olli Artemjev 2012-03-07 21:56:19 UTC
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20111108 Iceweasel/3.5.16 (like Firefox/3.5.16)

The story from today. :) I had to restart installation after a couple of selections already made wasting a lot of time. 

I should note, that I refuse to replay the situation - this will take too many efforts (& OpenSuSE currently is not a my daily distro). Though I think I got a reason sausing the failure, so feel free to ask for more details if the story seem to be incomplete.

So, my story:

0. Disk partitioning is prepared within other OS (to ensure compatibility w/ M$ software and buggy partitioning tools like Partition Magic with famous 'partition table error' on a good partition table w/ confusing it boundaries).
Partitioning is as follows:

sda
partition1: ntfs
partition2: unformatted
partition3: ext4 (Fedora15 unencrypted /boot)
partition4: extended
partition5: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition6: unformatted
partition7: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition8: ntfs 
partition9: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)

lvm details are omited (note from 1.: lvm is constructed OK only w/ this partition order) 


1. Install Fedora15 first. Make it use luks partitions. Make it having at least three encrypted partitions. Make lvm setup within Fedora over these encrypted partitions using luks devices as a phisical volumes. The lvm setup on my Fedora15 install was as follows: / , swap & /something are mounted on, for example partition5,partition7,partition8. Due to Fedora15 buggy beheviour the /something will fail to mount in setup above if blkid's are changed (1 of 3 lvm groups will fail to start & fedora will stop booting (asking for a root intervention). (I can claim that since I've git repo for /etc on that Fedora exemplar & after rescuing the Fedora my 'git status' reports that commands I ran made changes in blkid.tab ). The fail depend on sequence to construct lvm mounts - one of underlining encrypted devices will be not started, thus only two of 3 required lvm volumes will be available until 'dmsetup' & 'cryptsetup' utils will be managed to update blkid.tab while getting the things mounted manually).

2. Well, now lets start OpenSuSE installation. Use custom disk setup. Provide password for accessing encrypted Fedora15 lvm-based setup.  Mount existing partitions, including lvm logical volumes from configuration found by a clever setup program inside Fedora. Now I did as follows: deleted existing partition 6 and create new two on a free space arrived, then managed them to be /boot & / (the / is encrypted). Now the partitions were renumbered. Partitions 7,8,9  (look 0. above) now are numbered as 6,7,8 and Fedora15 now waits for a root user to fix lvm constructing problems.

The partitioning now looks like this:
sda
partition1: ntfs
partition2: unformatted
partition3: ext4 (Fedora15 unencrypted /boot)
partition4: extended
partition5: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition6: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition7: ntfs 
partition8: 0x83 (luks  encrypted, lvm phisical volume)
partition9: ext4 (open_suse /boot partition)
partition10: open_suse_created_encrypted_phisical_volume ('d be encrypted '/')

lvm details are omited (note from 1.: lvm is constructed OK only w/ this partition order) 

3. After above I confirmed that I finished w/ all my configuration tasks & surely willing to continue w/ installation.

4. The installation failed on step 'prepare disks'. After some errors I aborted install within dialog '"Ignore error & continue" or "Abort installation"', since I was not sure that it will modify partitions I inteded it to do.

For me the root of the failure is dependency on lvm setup from other distribution, that is only OK with an unmodified partition order.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install some linux w/ lvm, make installation in a manner when changing partition numbers will make LVM fail to start on that 'some Linux' (details above in 'Details' section).

2. Run OpenSuSE installation, use custom partitioning & make it mount the lvm partitions from 'some Linux' (installed as noted in 1. above).

3. After getting the 'some Linux' LVM mounted within OpenSuSE installation delete & add partitions - the process of add/delete must reorder partion numbers in way that will broke LVM construction under 'some Linux' (as noted in 1) . 

4. The installation will fail after confirming 'start installation' due to disk prepare erros.

The reason of the failure is dependency on lvm setup from other distribution, that is only OK with an unmodified partition order.
Actual Results:  
The installation produce errors preparing disk partitioning & asks user to inore or abort. 

Since it's not clear what's going on under 'error SOMENUMBER_IDONTREMEMBER' (no good explaining logs on other consoles) the best bet is to abort & restart.


Expected Results:  
The installation should be able to manage such lvm construction errors gently: 

1. Ensure that root partition is not failing to be constructed & mounted.

2. tell user that the following partitions (list volumes) are now fail to be constructed & will be removed from list of partitions to mount - he/she should manage this after installation (there seem to be no easy way to fix this within install time)

It would be very nice to be able to export at least software selected to some file on some media - detailed software selection is most time consuming & should be saveble part of installation work.

I set severity to Major since:

*) this is wrong idea to fail due to assumptions that sourced from untrusted (not made by us) configuration will be OK after partition modifications made by us. By 'us' I mean 'the installation programm'.

*) If triggered, this bug leads to wasting all work done while configuring this installation.
Comment 1 Olli Artemjev 2012-03-07 22:01:15 UTC
mistype:

Second copy of string 'lvm details are omited (note from 1.: lvm is constructed OK only w/ this partition order)' should look exactly 'lvm details are omited (note from 1.: lvm is constructed OK only w/ partition order in 0. )'

s/sause/cause/
Comment 2 Olli Artemjev 2012-03-07 22:07:00 UTC
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=722916 describe a situation w/ SuSE  that is similar to one of possible reasons making Fedora15 constructed lvm setup to fail to build some of its volume groups & mount related logical volume(s).
Comment 3 Olli Artemjev 2012-03-07 22:34:34 UTC
By applying 'Bad Design' keyword I mean exactly this: 

*) this is wrong idea to assume that mounts driven by an untrusted
configuration source will still work OK after partition modifications made later.

It seems that imported mounts are being checked only at import time - another point of failure also related to code design, IMO.
Comment 5 Kun Kun Zhang 2012-04-18 08:56:40 UTC
Hi,could you please help to have a look this?I am not sure whether it is right to assign it you.Feel free to reassign it.Thank you.
Comment 7 Chenzi Cao 2014-11-28 05:47:27 UTC
Hi, this product does not longer get updates, would you please double check whether this issues still exist and you can reproduce it on a newer openSUSE version preferable 13.2? In that case please open a new bug and provide a reference to this bug and close this one, thank you :)
Comment 8 Chenzi Cao 2014-12-15 02:43:51 UTC
This product does not longer get updates, if this issue still exists and you can reproduce it on a newer openSUSE version preferable 13.2, please open a new bug and provide a reference to this bug, thank you :)