Bug 47872

Summary: clearpart --all doesn't always work
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Dax Kelson <dkelson>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Jeremy Katz <katzj>
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE QA Contact: Brock Organ <borgan>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.1   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2001-07-27 20:21:26 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Dax Kelson 2001-07-08 17:45:26 UTC 
From Bugzilla Helper:
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Description of problem:
You would expect clearpart --all to work regardless of the current
contents/condition of the boot sector.

It doesn't.

For example:

cat /var/log/messages > /dev/hda; sync; reboot -f -n
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda bs=4086 count=50; sync; reboot -f -n


Will make it so a clearpart --all will not work correctly.

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Screw up the boot sector
2. Reboot and try to do a kickstart with clearpart --all

	

Additional info:

Here is my workaround in my kickstart.ks:

%pre
# Fix complaining anaconda about foobared partition table
# you would think that "clearpart --all" would take care
# of it, but it doesn't, so here is the workaround
mknod /dev/hda
echo -e "d\n4\nd\n3\nd\n2\nd\n1\nw\n" | fdisk /dev/hda
Comment 1 Brent Fox 2001-07-10 15:58:30 UTC 
Right.  clearpart --all only affects the partitions on the disk...not the master
boot record.  I think what you are looking for is the 'zerombr yes' tag.  This
should reinitialize the boot record.

Refer to
http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7.1-Manual/customization-guide/s1-kickstart2-options.html
for more information about zerombr.
Comment 2 Dax Kelson 2001-07-10 16:24:13 UTC 
I am using "zerombr yes" as well, eg:

zerombr yes
clearpart --all

Red Hat 7.0 and earlier worked fine, this is a new change with 7.1.
Comment 3 Michael Fulbright 2001-07-27 20:21:21 UTC 
Jeremy check this against our current tree please.
Comment 4 Jeremy Katz 2001-07-31 22:01:16 UTC 
This works fine in our current tree.