Live Installer doesn't work

[lory]

Hi, i tried to install SalixOS via the Salix Live Installer, but when clicking on "Partions"
the installer stops and the button stays "clicked".
I think it is installer line 437 "parted -sl | grep -v ..."
because typing into terminal "parted -sl" terminal hangs, too.
Any ideas? Does the "Partions" Button work on your system? Thanks!

[Shador]

Parted used to launch instantly here.
I just tried on my 64bit installation and there it took like 30s to start.
parted -sl also has that delay but never returns.

Ok, looks like I found the source of the problem. This error is caused by the presence of /dev/fd0, when there is only a floppy controller available but no floppy drive connected to it. This causes also the initial delay. strace revealed that it tries to open/read fd0 before generating any output, which causes a delay because it fails. It then goes forward and outputs the disk information and finally deadloops trying to read fd0.

You should see something like this in your dmesg | tail output:

Code: Select all

end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 1
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 7

Or when running strace parted -sl:

Code: Select all

read(3, 0x633e00, 512)                  = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
lseek(3, 3584, SEEK_SET)                = 3584

A quick google search revealed that the problem is pretty common: http://www.google.de/search?q=parted+ha ... utf-8&aq=t

Hey, writing this, I had parted running along and now that I'm finished - after some minutes - it stopped trying to read from fd0 and finally terminated.
So just wait like 5-10mins and it works.

Edit: I didn't post the workaround, did I.
You should check your BIOS and search for an option to disable your floppy (controller). I've found quite a few reports which confirmed it as working. (e.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/gparted/+bug/155047)
Edit2: Seems like this was fixed with gparted by using /proc/partitions instead of (lib)parted. Maybe this is an option for the LiveCD, too. Akuna?
For reference: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=351753
This is the (dead) bug report at parted: http://parted.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin ... ticket/194

[Akuna]

Edit2: Seems like this was fixed with gparted by using /proc/partitions instead of (lib)parted. Maybe this is an option for the LiveCD, too. Akuna?

Yes. Thank you for the bug report & excellent (as usual) investigation.

[lory]

yes, you are right! and in fact, after 5 min. it worked fine

[Akuna]

Done. New version on svn.

It is still using parted since that is an easy way to collect detailed info regarding the different partitions, however parted does not probe the system anymore.