[Bug 1413687] Re: All disks are not showed at the time of partman/early-command execution

[Mauricio Faria de Oliveira]

Canonical,

It seems the problem here is the delay some disks in the IPR controller
encounter to show up.

>From dmesg there's 2 IPR controllers, and the kernel module initializes
the controllers sequentially, so the disks from the 2nd controller take
even more time to show up.

I'm not sure 'udevadm settle' would wait for a SCSI scan to finish, but
maybe only for the processing of the udev events of the disks/partitions
being added?

>From some testing, it seems that 'modprobe ipr; udevadm settle' ends
after all disks show up, but that seems to be mostly because modprobe
takes a long time to finish (thus udevadm settle would be more of a
guarantee).

Is it possible to implement something like that (ensure all disks
finished detection) in the hw-detect stage, before finishing and
allowing partman to start -- so the partman/early-command executes only
when all disks are detected/SCSI scans finished?

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Title:
  All disks are not showed at the time of partman/early-command
  execution

Status in debian-installer package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  == Comment: #0 - Haren Myneni <hbabu at us.ibm.com> - 2015-01-07 21:34:09 ==
  ---Problem Description---
  Using preseed partman/early-command to select the disk based on user selection with location ID. But the 'iprconfig show-config' command could not see all expected disks. Looking at the dmesg at the time of this command execution, all disks are not probed. On our system, only HDD disks are probed and SDD disks are not available.  

  After some time, the dmesg shows the kernel found other disks. we are
  seeing the same behavior even with kernel parameter
  'scsi_mod.scan=sync'

  So with this issue, user can not select some disks with automated installation. 
   
  Contact Information = hbabu at us.ibm.com 
   
  ---uname output---
  14.10 release
   
  Machine Type = Any power system with more disks 
   
  ---Debugger---
  A debugger is not configured
   
  ---Steps to Reproduce---
   Select system which has more disks. Select last disk in automated installation
   
  Install method: NFS
   
  Install disk info: SDD
   
  Install ISO Information: Ubuntu Utopia

  == Comment: #3 - Haren Myneni <hbabu at us.ibm.com> - 2015-01-07 21:42:54 ==
  preseed file:

  d-i partman/early_command string \
  	mkdir /tmp/updates; cd  /tmp/updates; \
  	wget -o /tmp/wget_log http://9.18.10.27/install/ppc/Ubuntu14_1410/preload_updates.tar.gz; \
  	tar zxvf preload_updates.tar.gz; \
  	/bin/sh /tmp/updates/preload/hooks/preseed/pre.sh;  \
  	DISKA=; \
  	debconf-set partman-auto/disk "$DISKA"; 

  We execute ipcronfig comamnd as part of pre.sh. As we see in the log
  file, only disks sda-sdf are listed.

  (In reply to comment #6)
  > (In reply to comment #5)
  ...
  > But it is installer issue - means all disks should be probed first, then the
  > installer should start downloading preseed file and execute
  > partman/early-command. As  I mentioned before, 'scsi_mod.scan=sync' dis not
  > solve the issue. Please note that even now we can install the default disk
  > sda since it is already probed, but we should be able to select any disk for
  > install which is requirement for preload  in manufacturing. 

  == Comment: #8 - Haren Myneni <hbabu at us.ibm.com> - 2015-01-16 11:40:32 ==
  It is not the issue of not recognizing some disks. As you see in the final dmesg output, all disks are probed and recognized. But the issue here is only few are probed before the installer started. So the problem is why the installer started before probing all storage devices.

  == Comment: #10 - Haren Myneni <hbabu at us.ibm.com> - 2015-01-21 15:24:51 ==
  As mentioned in the bug description, first dmesg was collected at the time of partman/early-command execution. It shows only sda-sdf disks are probed. We were attempting to install on sdh and set this disk as install disk with partman/early-command. Since the iprconfig command could not list sdh (since it is not probed at this time), the installer could not set this disk and then failed.

  We collected the final dmesg later when we noticed the the failure.
  The final dmesg shows all expected disks sda- sdl are probed and we
  verified with iprconfig command.

  So this issue could be timing of starting the installer before all
  devices are probed. We should expect that the kernel boot should be
  completed and then the installer should start.

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