[Bug 1065281] Re: Installer crashed when trying to partition 4k/4k sector hard disks

[Kent Baxley]

I ran some experiments today and this so far seems to be the 'sweet
spot' with regard to the EFI system partition:

1) Before installing, I created a 133MB partition on my gpt disk using parted, type FAT32 and bootable.
2) I formatted the partition using "mkfs.vfat -s1 /dev/sda1"
3) Booted to the 13.10 server installer.
4) At partitioning time, I chose 'manual', and did not touch the EFI system partition (things looked to be recognized properly by the installer, anyway, in that regard).  I created a root and swap partition on the disk with the remaining space. 
5) Proceeded with the installation. 
6) Upon reboot, EFI (for the first time ever) was able to attempt booting automatically from the system partition on this type of hard drive.  I was dropped to a grub prompt, but, this is a huge improvement over where we were earlier. 

I also repeated the above using what we're currently setting the EFI
partition to (which is around 100MB) and the *only* way I could get the
system to try and boot was to manually drill down to the grubx64.efi /
shimx64.efi via the 'Boot from file' option in the EFI menu.

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Title:
  Installer crashed when trying to partition 4k/4k sector hard disks

Status in The Dell PowerEdge project:
  In Progress
Status in OEM Priority Project:
  Fix Committed
Status in OEM Priority Project precise series:
  In Progress
Status in OEM Priority Project quantal series:
  In Progress
Status in OEM Priority Project raring series:
  Fix Released
Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu quantal series:
  Triaged
Status in “dosfstools” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “efibootmgr” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “partman-base” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “partman-basicfilesystems” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “partman-efi” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “dosfstools” source package in Precise:
  Fix Committed
Status in “efibootmgr” source package in Precise:
  Triaged
Status in “partman-base” source package in Precise:
  Triaged
Status in “partman-basicfilesystems” source package in Precise:
  Fix Committed
Status in “partman-efi” source package in Precise:
  Fix Committed
Status in “dosfstools” source package in Quantal:
  Fix Committed
Status in “efibootmgr” source package in Quantal:
  Triaged
Status in “partman-base” source package in Quantal:
  Triaged
Status in “partman-basicfilesystems” source package in Quantal:
  Fix Committed
Status in “partman-efi” source package in Quantal:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  partman_server crashes on Ubuntu 12.10 server for amd64 when trying to
  partition an Advanced Format (4k / 4k sector) hard disk.

  Disks that utilize 4k sectors with 512 emulation work fine.  The
  installer has no problems with those.

  Steps to Reproduce:
  1) Begin the installation in EFI mode. 
  2) At the disk partitioning stage, select "Guided use Entire Disk" or "Manual"
  3) Review and accept the proposed partitioning scheme and write changes to disk. 

  Actual Results:
  The system will attempt to create a the EFIboot partition.  At this stage the installer appears to hang.   Pressing Ctrl+AltF4 reveals that parted_server has crashed with the following message:

  parted_server[13865]: segfault at 22fa000 ip 00007fa6eb74bee7 sp
  00007fffec3ab500 error 4 in libparted.so.0.0.1[7fa6eb735000+64000]

  Expected results:
  Installation should carry on without a crash.

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