Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 438592
abnormal termination of installation - UnicodeDecodeError
Last modified: 2008-03-23 19:59:47 EDT
Description of problem: Attempted an install via pxeboot using the images available early on 03-22: initrd.img 21-Mar-2008 04:20 9491648 vmlinuz 21-Mar-2008 04:20 2132448 (timestamp shown from mirror's web directory). Since " Unable to Start X X was unable to start on your machine", this turned into a text mode install. It fails with the traceback included below. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda 11.4.0.55 How reproducible: 1 out of 1 attempts Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot the pxeboot images, involuntarily select Text Mode install. 2. Within a few minutes of progressing to "Install Starting", with the progress bar over text such as "6 of 909 packages completed", rewarded with an exception. Actual results: Install failed. Expected results: A successful installation. Additional info: Since the text "Save to Disk" appears on screen, but the associated ~checkbox is not selectable, you will have to settle for this manual transcription (complete with the line breaks as displayed on screen): -- Exception Occurred -- anaconda 11.4.0.55 exception report Traceback (most recent call first): File "/usr/lib/anaconda/yuminstall.py", line 160, in callback s += (hdr['summary'] or "") File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/__in it__.py", line 764, in runTransaction errors = self.ts.run(cb.callback, '') File "/usr/lib/anaconda/yuminstall.py", line 698, in _run self.runTransaction(cb=cb) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/yuminstall.py", line 682, in run if self._run(instLog, cb, intf) == DISPATCH_BACK; File "/usr/lib/anaconda/yuminstall.py", line 1487, in doInstall rc = self.ayum.run(self.instLog, cb, anaconda.intf, anaconda.id) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/backend.py", line 209, in doInstall return anaconda.backend.doInstall(anaconda) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/dispatch.py", line 208, in moveStep rc = stepFunc(self.anaconda) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/dispatch.py", line 131, in gotoNext self.moveStep() File "/usr/lib/anaconda/text.py", line 701, in run anaconda.dispatch.gotoNext() File "/usr/bin/anaconda", line 1046, in <module> anaconda.intf.run(anaconda) UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc2 in position 19: ordinal not in range(128) OK Save Debug
(In reply to comment #0) now 2 out of 2 attempts To slightly improve your chances of recreating this failure, I thought I should try to gather a few clues for what repository data was being fetched to install at the time of this traceback. So I repeated the installation attempt (on the same day, before any repo updates may render such clues less meaningful). As an aside, using the boot parameter "xdriver=vesa" did not spare me the "Unable to Start X X was unable to start on your machine" circumstance, so this was once again a text mode install. Watching carefully, I am certain that this traceback occurs at the time "21 of 905 packages completed" is displayed. No package name is shown at that time. (I had deselected the "Office and Productivity" ~checkbox on the package selection screen with hopes of a faster install, and a plan to install additional packages later.) I am moderately certain that the previous package was so small and downloaded so quickly that neither "20" nor its name was ever displayed. I believe the package name "gnome-backgrounds" was on screen concurrently with "19 of 905 packages completed". Additionally, through the vagaries of buffering, this time on the virtual terminal accessible via Alt+F3, following the traceback quoted above, there was an additional line: 12:34:19 INFO : in run, screen = <snack.SnackScreen instance at 0xb772198c> It is likely that these remaining informational and warning messages are not causative for this incident. On the virtual terminal accessible via Alt+F4, the following messages were displayed (dating from the installation phase ~10 minutes prior to this traceback failure, at the time the partitioning information was being written to disk?): <30>Mar 22 12:23:40 hald[1347]: 12:23:40.552 [I] osspec.c:288: /proc/mounts tells, that the mount tree has changed <30>Mar 22 12:23:40 hald[1347]: 12:23:40.570 [I] osspec.c:241: SEQNUM=1115, ACTION=remove, SUBSYSTEM=vc, DEVPATH=/sys/devices/virtual/vc/vcs5, DEVNAME=/dev/vcs5, IFINDEX=0 <30>Mar 22 12:23:40 hald[1347]: 12:23:40.571 [I] device.c:4371: remove_dev: subsys=vc sysfs_path=/sys/devices/virtual/vc/vcs5 <28>Mar 22 12:23:40 hald[1347]: 12:23:40.571 [W] device.c:4375: Error removing device <30>Mar 22 12:23:40 hald[1347]: 12:23:40.583 [I] osspec.c:241: SEQNUM=1116, ACTION=remove, SUBSYSTEM=vc, DEVPATH=/sys/devices/virtual/vc/vcsa5, DEVNAME=/dev/vcsa5, IFINDEX=0 <30>Mar 22 12:23:40 hald[1347]: 12:23:40.584 [I] device.c:4371: remove_dev: subsys=vc sysfs_path=/sys/devices/virtual/vc/vcsa5 <28>Mar 22 12:23:40 hald[1347]: 12:23:40.585 [W] device.c:4375: Error removing device
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 437993 ***