Bug 972266

Created attachment 758426 [details]
anaconda.log

Created attachment 758427 [details]
ifcfg.log

Created attachment 758428 [details]
packaging.log

Created attachment 758431 [details]
program.log

Created attachment 758441 [details]
storage.log

Created attachment 758442 [details]
syslog

Proposing as Final FE at least (there's an argument for blocker, I guess...)

Discussed at 2013-06-10 freeze exception review meeting: http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-blocker-review/2013-06-10/f19final-blocker-review-4.2013-06-10-16.01.log.txt . Accepted as a freeze exception issue: this is obviously unintended and unexpected behaviour, and while it can be worked around, the workaround is quite hard to discover and to do, and looks really bad.

Note, this bug affects text mode too, only there it's worse: I haven't found a way to actually make the spoke happy. You just get stuck looping through it, making some choices, and then it complains that you haven't created a / partition and leaves the spoke at [!] (No disks selected).

Similar behavior with a single-line kickstart file specifying the timezone:

timezone America/New_York --isUtc

I'd like this to work so I can tell the installer to set the hardware clock to UTC even if Windows is detected (see bug 981793). BTW, I'm not sure if the correct syntax is --utc or --isUtc - I see --utc in the documentation, but --isUtc in an automatically generated kickstart file.

BTW, in the minimal packages ks file, "install" at the top apparently isn't necessary, the behavior is the same even if it's omitted.

Same result with a 1-byte ks file (the installer wouldn't start at all with a 0-byte file).

For me this issue seems to be quite a bit worse then what seems to be indicated here. The workaround in the install destination spoke allows the install to proceed but the installed system has no grub and will not boot. Basically, after install I click reboot and after the machine boots I get a blank black screen with a blinking cursor in the top right corner. 

After booting into rescue mode I can see that /boot/grub2 is virtually empty. Also, after reviewing anaconda.program.log I can see grub2 was never executed.

Here is the broken kickstart (which seems to match this BZ):

url --url=http://home01/Fedora-19-x86_64
keyboard --vckeymap=us --xlayouts='us'
lang en_US.UTF-8
timezone America/Chicago --isUtc
rootpw  --iscrypted $6$salt$8crtag4b3gU8LiNlhWfrHq8LF1g2TrNZo4lDEnbhR8iM71D2KnISNuLSsPuFWdfBlQDd5T2a8qv4bVvNSPrra.

%packages
@core

%end


And here is the working one (exact same but we specify the disk/part info):

url --url=http://home01/Fedora-19-x86_64
keyboard --vckeymap=us --xlayouts='us'
lang en_US.UTF-8
timezone America/Chicago --isUtc
rootpw  --iscrypted $6$salt$8crtag4b3gU8LiNlhWfrHq8LF1g2TrNZo4lDEnbhR8iM71D2KnISNuLSsPuFWdfBlQDd5T2a8qv4bVvNSPrra.
bootloader --location=mbr --boot-drive=sda
autopart --type=lvm
clearpart --all --initlabel --drives=sda

%packages
@core

%end



And both installed systems produce the exact same final anaconda-ks.cfg:

#version=DEVEL

# Use network installation
url --url="http://home01/Fedora-19-x86_64"
ignoredisk --only-use=sda
# Keyboard layouts
keyboard --vckeymap=us --xlayouts='us'
# System language
lang en_US.UTF-8

# Network information
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=p2p1 --noipv6 --activate
network  --hostname=pinky-vm01.oleary.home
# Root password
rootpw --iscrypted $6$salt$8crtag4b3gU8LiNlhWfrHq8LF1g2TrNZo4lDEnbhR8iM71D2KnISNuLSsPuFWdfBlQDd5T2a8qv4bVvNSPrra.
# System services
services --enabled="chronyd"
# System timezone
timezone America/Chicago --isUtc
# System bootloader configuration
bootloader --location=mbr --boot-drive=sda
autopart --type=lvm
# Partition clearing information
clearpart --all --initlabel --drives=sda

%packages
@core
chrony

%end




So, it appears that the only workaround for this issue is to specify all the disk parameters. I have tried variations to see if anything would make things better such as using bootloader only and/or autopart but nothing seemed to change the end result. Without those disk/part options in the kickstart file, no bootable system. 

Please note that I can use the broken kickstart file and then boot into rescue mode and run the grub2 commands myself to get the system to boot:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub2-install --no-floppy /dev/sda
grub2-set-default "Fedora Linux, with Linux 3.9.5-301.fc19.x86_64"
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

(In reply to Larry O'Leary from comment #12)
...
> bootloader --location=mbr --boot-drive=sda
...

Thanks for your report. Did you try adding just the bootloader option?

Larry: I don't recall whether I actually completed the install and verified the bootloader was present in my tests, at this point...

Discussed in 2013-11-14 Blocker Review Meeting [1]. This was voted a AcceptedFreezeException. This is obviously unintended and unexpected behaviour, and while it can be worked around, the workaround is quite hard to discover and to do, and looks really bad. We would accept a patch after freeze if self-contained and safe.

[1] http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-blocker-review/2013-11-14/

I've tried it with TC3 & the packages-only kickstart:

install

%packages
@core
nano
fpaste
%end

And it seems to work fine - I've entered the installation destination spoke, clicked reclaim, delete all and everything went fine. No repeated entries or explicit bootloader installation was necessary. So I would say it is fixed.

On the other hand, the related bug 972265 seems to be still going strong.

oh hey, that's a nice bonus. i'll see if I can confirm.

confirmed, this looks to be fixed in F20 final tc5, 972265 is still valid.