Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 242938
Installer problem : Fedora-7/ RHEL-5.0 derivatives
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:12:06 EST
Description of problem:I have a problem with the Scientific Linux-5.0 (RHEL-5.0 derivative) and the Fedora-7 installer on a X86 system with multiple IDE hard disks with dos partition tables (multiple primaries). The installer speaks of not being able to inform the kernel of changes to the first logical of the extended partition of hdb. Parted (1.8.6 for e.g) has no problems. This looks like a bug with Anaconda. I get the error message after selecting the packages, i.e. just before the actual install of packages to hard disk in the usual GUI install with no options. The IDE disks have dos partition tables (3 primaries each + extended and logicals within that, it is all ext3 except for a single BSD primary (hdb2)). I formatted the partitions for / beforehand with ext3 with latest parted. So during install I just had to select the mount point for / (at hda15). The error message is "cannot inform the kernel of changes to the /dev/hdb5 without rebooting" (first logical of the extended partition of hdb). The install target (/) was hda15. The error is due to the old pyparted library used in the installer (?). I have installed other Linux distros (Edubuntu) in the same setup without any problem. I have FC-6 installed too. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Attempt GUI install of RHEL-5.0 or a derivative thereof or Fedora-7 on a X86 system with two or more IDE hard disks with dos partition tables with three primary partitions + extended and logicals (formatted with ext3). Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Actual results: Install fails after the selection of packages as it cannot "inform root about changes to /dev/hdb5 without rebooting" Expected results: Additional info: Anacconda back-trace attached.
Created attachment 156363 [details] Anaconda dump to fd0
Removing Security keyword and lowering Severity. Though we are thankful for your report I would kindly ask you to use more appropriate severity and only the keywords that really apply according to their description to avoid confusion.
Created attachment 156824 [details] anaconda dump I'm seeing the same traceback. My system has two PATA disks, one of which has more than 15 partitions, a fact which anaconda reminded me of five times. Only one partition is inaccessible: it's part of a RAID 1 array.
At the time of install of Scientific Linux-5.0, Edubuntu was in /hdb1 while DreamLinux was in /hdb3. I could install SL-5.0 without any problem when I replaced hdb with a new disk on a similar partitioning scheme (I used parted-1.7.1 for the partitioning now).
The error reported in the traceback has been fixed in anaconda. The warning dialog box only tries to appear when we have a user interface present.