Bug 507038

Summary:	RFE: please allow "rollback" recovery after failed operation
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Karel Volný <kvolny>
Component:	anaconda	Assignee:	Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status:	CLOSED CANTFIX	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	rawhide	CC:	anaconda-maint-list, pjones, rmaximo, vanmeeuwen+fedora
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2009-07-06 15:17:15 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Karel Volný 2009-06-19 22:51:57 UTC

Description of problem:
During installation, sometimes it happens that things go wrong and the installer reports an error and terminates itself. In many cases, the administrator sees the cause of the problem and is able to workaround it. Unfortunately, to do so, he has to start the installation from the beginning, loosing time repeating steps he has already done before (some of them may take very long, e.g. for me it was deselecting packages when testing under qemu). Please allow the last - the failing - operation to be undone, to return to previous dialogue to try to workaround without losing the installation steps that went good so far.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. start DVD installation on PPC
2. go ahead with installation until network settings dialogue appears
3. cancel the dialogue

Actual results:
the installer terminates, you have to do the installation from the beginning again

Expected results:
the installer reports the error, then it offers to step back, after agreeing it shows the network settings dialogue again

Additional info:
Note that the error reproducer was taken from http://www.abclinuxu.cz/blog/salamovo/2009/6/zkurvena-fedora-11-ppc (in Czech) and it itself reveals one or two another bugs - however it is upon the blog author to confirm and report them, I do not have the hardware nor time and will to try to reproduce. I've just taken this as an example of Anaconda crash, as I can't think of any reliable way how to achive that right now (well, maybe I'm just too lazy to query the bugzilla ;-)) But I remember each time seeing error in installer, I had no option to recover, I had to start installing from scratch.

Comment 3 Chris Lumens 2009-07-06 15:17:15 UTC

When you hit a traceback that results in seeing the main exn dialog, you're at a point where it's basically impossible to continue in any useful way.  This dialog is the top-level exception handler in anaconda, so you're all the way back up the call stack and there's not a way to come back down to resume from where the traceback happened.

So if there's a specific traceback you are seeing, then we need to address those so they're no longer hitting you.  If you're hitting some other error dialog and you don't have a way to go back, let us know what the dialogs are and we can look at whether or not it's possible to recover.

But in the generic case, there's not really a way to do it.