Re: [Dragora-users] dragora-installer: Partition detection issues

[Matias Fonzo]

El 2019-11-11 14:18, Michael Siegel escribió:
> Hello,
>
> after discussing some problems with storage device detection in
> dragora-installer on IRC yesterday, I have now done a couple of more 
> tests.
>
> The first thing I found is that it is apparently not a good idea to use
> the first partition of the hard drive as the swap partition and then
> have the root partition come second, e.g.:
>
>   root@dragora:~ # fdisk -l | grep ^/dev/sd
>   /dev/sda1          2048   2099199   2097152    1G 82 Linux swap /
>   Solaris
>   /dev/sda2  *    2099200 156301487 154202288 73.5G 83 Linux
>
> When you do that, running dragora-installer will fail:
>
>   root@dragora:~ # dragora-installer
>       Linux partitions were not detected.
>
>   A Linux partition is required to continue the installation.  You can
>   use utilities such as fdisk(8), cfdisk(8) or parted(8) to create at
>   least one Linux partition.  Then run `dragora-installer' again.
>
>   ^ Return status = 1
>
> So, I simply turned that partition layout around to make things work.
> I'm not exactly sure if other Linux distributions do allow for swap to
> come first, but I'm inclined to think they do. Anyway, this is not a 
> big
> deal.

This has been fixed to match the current patterns of the provided fdisk 
version (currently from util-linux 2.34).

> Then, I chose to do an Expert-mode installation because I was curious 
> to
> see what the different software series contain. I also threw out a few
> packages while going through the lists, but carefully. However, this 
> all
> ended in getting a barrage of syntax errors for grep. So, I chose to
> start over and re-ran dragora-installer.

So far I haven't detected anything strange in the code or in the 
post-installation scripts of the packages.  I will see to it that I 
review this carefully during the installation.

> Now, dragora-installer did detect my swap partition (on /dev/sda2) when
> I re-ran it, but: When I chose “Ignore & Continue” in the swap setup
> dialog, the installer lost track of it and didn't show it when
> displaying fstab later. Simply adding the missing entry manually and
> then continuing the installation worked, however.
>
> On the other hand, when I chose “Format” instead of “Ignore & 
> Continue”,
> the installer informed me that the swap partition is formatted and
> active already and that it would therefore not do anything with it. 
> But:
> Choosing “Format” also led to the swap partition being included in the
> fstab shown later.

To improve this I have made the following changes:

The installer will now detect if there is a swap partition and if it is 
activated.  In this case it will inform the user and will be added to 
the fstab entry.

If the swap partition exists but was not activated, it offers the 
possibility to format it.  If you "Ignore & Continue", it will try to 
activate the partition and if successful it will be added to the fstab 
entry.

For both cases, where it is about activating the swap partition (format 
given by the installer or format previously given by the user), the user 
will see the activation progress, plus an additional check to see if it 
was activated successfully, if so, it is added to the fstab entry.  If 
the swap activation check did not pass, we give the possibility to 
continue or abort to check the problem.  In the latter case, where the 
check is false, nothing is added to the fstab entry.

I've prepared a new package in case you want to try it:

http://rsync.dragora.org/current/packages/x86_64/tools/dragora-installer-20191119-x86_64+1.tlz
http://rsync.dragora.org/current/packages/x86_64/tools/dragora-installer-20191119-x86_64+1.tlz.sha256