Testing wanted for bug 62986 (hangs during installation on SMP systems)

[Colin Watson]

Hi,

Bug 62986 (https://launchpad.net/bugs/62986) has been plaguing us for a
while, and is a candidate for inclusion in Ubuntu 6.06.2. It's a race in
a component of debconf that causes random but not infrequent hangs
during installation on (as far as I can tell) SMP systems.

Today, I published hand-modified i386 alternate CD images including what
I believe to be the correct fix here:

  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/custom/20070805-bug62986/

I am very much in need of testing, both from people who have been
affected by this bug and people who have not (in order to confirm that I
haven't created any other similar problems). I am only interested in
successes or problems in the "Select and install software" stage. If it
gets stuck forever there, you've reproduced the bug; if it doesn't, and
doesn't exhibit any other weird behaviour *in that stage of
installation*, then the fix works. If you experience *any* other
problems during installation from these test images, please report new
bugs rather than commenting on bug 62986.

I am particularly in need of testing here because the fix is not simple
(I've attached it for reference in case anyone's feeling brave): it
involves funnelling all debconf communication from subsidiary processes
through debconf-apt-progress rather than just connecting up the file
descriptors and praying it doesn't collide with debconf-apt-progress'
own debconf communication. The original author of debconf, who's the
person other than me best qualified to review this, said:

  <cjwatson> joeyh: any other obvious signs of breakage in that patch?
  <joeyh> no, though my ability to eyeball select loop code and find
          bugs is low, especially when it's in perl

So, while I've been as careful as I can, my ability to get this into
Ubuntu 6.06.2 is directly dependent on user testing within the next week
or so. If you have an SMP system where you can do some installation
testing, I would greatly appreciate a little bit of your time on this.

Please send any followups other than success/failure reports to
ubuntu-installer at lists.ubuntu.com.

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]
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