Bug 58742

Summary:	partition table sdg not readable, after using fdisk during install process,
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	john.goshdigian
Component:	anaconda	Assignee:	Jeremy Katz <katzj>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Mike McLean <mikem>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	7.3
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	alpha
OS:	Linux
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2004-10-05 02:28:49 UTC	Type:	---
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Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description john.goshdigian 2002-01-23 22:22:10 UTC

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12-20smp i686)

Description of problem:
During installation,  use fdisk to partition drive sdg, as follows:
start    end  type
 2  - 27    ext2
27 - 91	  swap
91 - 1023 ext2
then w - write out the table, then q - finished with fdisk,
The following Error message is displayed:
The partition table on device sdg was unreadable. To create a new partition
it must be initialized,  casuing the loss of all  DATA on this drive.
Click Yes, and let it continue. Result is one  partition of  Free space 1-1023.

The bug is : what did fdisk do, and why can't the install process read whatever
it did to the partition table?

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. boot cd1 for install
2. select custom
3. select fdisk, selected sdg 
4. delete any previous partitions,
5. add new partitions with layout: 2->27 ext2; 27->91 swap; 91-1023 ext2
6. write partition table, quit
Result: install can not read partition table that fdisk just created

Expected Results:  install to be able to use the partition table that was just
created with fdisk.

Additional info:

this was attempted on an ES40 with 7 disk drives.
The other drives had older Linux releases and Tru64 Operation System

Comment 1 harry.heinisch 2002-01-24 19:53:52 UTC

Disk druid also fails to  read a fresh disk label - on a ds10l, using fdisk to 
partition the disk (/boot, swap, /) without toggling a file system type, write 
the label and then continue the install - disk druid shows that the disk as 
free space. (no partitions) Go back to fdisk and toggle the files systems to 
ext2, swap and ext2  - then disk druid shows the partitions (although as  
foreign)

Phil.sullivan

Comment 2 Alexandre Petit-Bianco 2002-02-26 03:30:28 UTC

> then disk druid shows the partitions (although as  
> foreign)

I tried to debug this and could see parted reading zeroes where magic
numbers were expected. It could be a problem with fdisk, among other
things (See 60004.)

Comment 3 Phil Copeland 2002-04-25 07:01:14 UTC

I think this one is fixed
But it works for *me*
Can someone recheck this with one of the more current ISO sets please?

Phil
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