Bug 359351

Summary: Kickstart, clearpart, partition table on device %s was unreadable
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Matthew S. Hallacy <poptix>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 7CC: colin, triage
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2008-06-17 02:46:02 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Matthew S. Hallacy 2007-10-30 22:31:05 UTC
Description of problem:
unattended kickstart install prompts with 'The partition table on device %s was
unreadable.' even though clearpart --all --initlabel was specified

How reproducible:
100%

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Zero out disk partition table
2. attempt kickstart

Actual results:
Error prompt

Expected results:
initialize partition table automatically.

Additional info:

I believe the source of this bug is in the following code:

(partedUtils.py)

 def _askForLabelPermission(self, intf, drive, clearDevs, initAll, ks):
 [.....]
           if ks and (drive in clearDevs) and initAll:
                rc = 1
            else:
[.....]
                msg = _("The partition table on device %s was unreadable. "

 It's checking 'clearDevs' (which can be specified with clearpart --drives=xxx)
but ignoring the fact that --all was specified. I believe the fix would be:

            if ks and ((drive in clearDevs) or initAll):

Comment 1 Bug Zapper 2008-05-14 14:55:53 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 7 is nearing the end of life. Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 7. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '7'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 7's end of life.

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Comment 2 Andy Lindeberg 2008-06-03 21:00:21 UTC
Have you encountered the same problem with Fedora 9?

Comment 3 Bug Zapper 2008-06-17 02:46:00 UTC
Fedora 7 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on June 13, 2008. 
Fedora 7 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not 
receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we 
are closing this bug. 

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version 
of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.

Comment 4 Colin Leroy 2010-09-28 09:30:46 UTC
This still happens on RHEL 5.5 with Anaconda 11.1.2.209-1.
The fix suggested by the original reporter works fine. Deploying RHEL automatically via PXE/Kickstart is impossible unless all the machines to be deployed have the same number of disks so they can be specified in ks.cfg's clearpart command, or unless the following is done on the repository:

# mkdir stage2-ro
# mkdir stage2-rw
# mount -o loop images/stage2.img stage2-ro
# cp -a stage2-ro stage2-rw
# umount stage2-ro
# rm stage2-rw/usr/lib/anaconda/partedUtils.pyc
# vi stage2-rw/usr/lib/anaconda/partedUtils.py #and patch according to comment #0.
# mv images/stage2.img images/stage2.img.broken
# mksquashfs stage2-rw images/stage2.img