Control: found -1 20150107
Control: severity -1 serious
Hi,
MARTON Jozsef wrote:
> The formatting dialog hanged at 33%.
>
> * What outcome did you expect instead?
>
> To re-format /dev/sda3 creating a fresh ext4 filesystem.
>
>
> After examining the situation and killing the mkfs.ext4 process on a
> second virtual terminal, the installer gave a red screen error and
> returned to the partitioning menu.
>
> Invoking mkfs.ext4 manually on the sencond VT, it gave the yes-no
> question that follows (captured under the running Jessie install, so
> mke2fs version might be different). This might be the point where
> the installer hanged at.
>
> # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
> mke2fs 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)
> /dev/sda3 contains a ext4 file system
> last mounted on / on Sat Nov 1 20:18:44 2014
> Proceed anyway? (y,n)
We ran into this today with the current Jessie installer (labeled RC1
IIRC). Context was the reinstallation of a computer with the same
partition layout.
The question vanishes if a -F is passed to the mkfs.ext* call, so this
should be an easy fix:
-F Force mke2fs to create a filesystem, even if the
specified device is not a partition on a block special
device, or if other parameters do not make sense. In
order to force mke2fs to create a filesystem even if the
filesystem appears to be in use or is mounted (a truly
dangerous thing to do), this option must be specified twice.
> After formatting from the second VT, installer was able to continue
> without re-formatting the partition. An other solution was to zero
> out the forst few megabytes of sda3 using dd and /dev/zero to allow
> formatting by the installer.
I consider both variants unsuitable for unexperienced users. A hanging
TUI without _any_ trace of reason, neither in the TUI no in the syslog
nor in the partman log must not happen.
Raising the severity to serious because I think that this is a
scenario (reinstallation or retrying an incomplete installation) which
can happen often enough and will confuse users massively due no
feedback from the installer what happens.
(D-I team: feel free to downgrade again to important if you disagree,
but I really would like to see this fixed for Jessie.)
Regards, Axel
--
,''`. | Axel Beckert <a...@debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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