Bug 13558

Summary:	Installer continues after failed boot loader installation (LILO: "Fatal: Linux experimental device 0xfc00 needs to be defined")
Product:	Mageia	Reporter:	Zoltan Balaton <balaton>
Component:	Installer	Assignee:	Thierry Vignaud <thierry.vignaud>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	Normal	CC:	thierry.vignaud
Version:	Cauldron
Target Milestone:	Mageia 6
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Source RPM:		CVE:
Status comment:
Attachments:	ddebug.log

Description Zoltan Balaton 2014-06-20 23:16:49 CEST

Description of problem:

During install near the end the boot loader installation has failed and the error was displayed in a window but then I was not given a second chance to select a different boot loader after that. Instead, the installer just continued and said "Congratulations" and wanted to reboot into the non working boot loader it just has failed to set up.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

4.1 boot-nonfree.iso x86_64 but probably not specific to this iso

How reproducible:

I was installing in a virtual machine with virtio harddisk and selected lilo text mode as the boot loader (why it failed is probably a separate bug that I don't report now, feel free to add a bug for that if needed).

Reproducible: 

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1 Thierry Vignaud 2014-06-24 17:47:16 CEST

well, we needs the logs in order to understand what happened.
Can you retrive /root/drakx/ddebug.log?
See libguestfs-tools

Keywords: (none) => NEEDINFO
CC: (none) => thierry.vignaud

Comment 2 Zoltan Balaton 2014-06-24 22:39:26 CEST

This bug is not about why the installation of the boot loader has failed so it is not important what happened. What's important is that if this step fails the installer should not continue as if it was successful but go back to the summary screen so I can select another bootloader and retry with that. It should only continue and reboot if the bootloader has successfully installed otherwise the user is left with a non working system. (I was able to fix the installation from the rescue system but less expirenced users might give up if this happens or have to reinstall to try a different bootloader.)

Anyway, if you want to also fix the particular case with lilo and virtio here are the details:

* fs::get::device2part: unknown device <</dev/vda>>
* running: keytab-lilo.pl us with root /mnt
* program not found: keytab-lilo.pl
* writing lilo config to /mnt/etc/lilo.conf
* Installing boot loader on /dev/vda...
* running: echo  | lilo  with root /mnt
* error: : Fatal: Linux experimental device 0xfc00 needs to be defined.
Check 'man lilo.conf' under 'disk=' and 'max-partitions='

matchbox-wm: X error warning (0xa13ced): 140 (opcode: 138)
* step "summary" took: 0:03:08
* step `summary' finished

I had to manually add this to lilo.conf and reinstall lilo to fix the installation:

disk=/dev/vda bios=0x80 max-partitions=7

But again, this is really a separate bug and fixing it so lilo works would not fix the general problem in case the bootloader installation fails for some other reason.

Comment 3 Thierry Vignaud 2014-06-27 15:32:58 CEST

I still need the full logs in order to understand what happened and thus what is the bug.
Please attach it (do not paste it)

Comment 4 Zoltan Balaton 2014-06-30 10:43:28 CEST

Created attachment 5222 [details]
ddebug.log

Attached ddebug.log

Comment 5 Dick Gevers 2014-12-03 16:43:58 CET

Needinfo no longer applies.

Keywords: NEEDINFO => (none)
Assignee: bugsquad => thierry.vignaud

Comment 6 Samuel Verschelde 2015-05-02 19:45:16 CEST

Setting version to cauldron since we can't fix Mageia 4 installers.

Version: 4 => Cauldron
Source RPM: Installer in 4.1 boot-nonfree.iso => (none)
Whiteboard: (none) => MGA4TOO

Samuel Verschelde 2015-06-06 01:42:02 CEST

Target Milestone: --- => Mageia 6
Whiteboard: MGA4TOO => (none)

Comment 7 Thierry Vignaud 2016-06-18 07:46:01 CEST

Lilo has issues with /dev/vda.
We cannot fix a released installer and we will only support grub2 in mga6.
The thing to do in such a case is to rerun the installer & choose a different bootloader when using mga4

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => WONTFIX
Summary: Installer continues after failed boot loader installation => Installer continues after failed boot loader installation (LILO: "Fatal: Linux experimental device 0xfc00 needs to be defined")