Ubuntu 13.10 failed install

Thu Nov 14 13:23:59 UTC 2013

Laptop: Dell XPS M1330
Install media: Ubuntu 13.10 (x86-64) LiveCD (written to a USB key)

This is a company laptop, assigned to our office admin.  The old hard
disk died.  We put in a new one, then I booted the Ubuntu 13.10 LiveCD
session, launched the Disks utility for a quick SMART self-test, looked
at the contents of the old partitions on the replacement disk, and
decided to start the installation.

I forgot to unmount the partitions I looked at in Nautilus.  The Ubuntu
installer asked me whether I wanted to unmout used partitions on sda and
sdb[*], and I said yes.

  [*] /dev/sdb was the USB key used for installation, formatted as FAT,
      with a bunch of Ubuntu .iso images and a GRUB2 setup that lets me
      boot any of them.

I chose "erase entire disk" and the installer complied, but then came
back with the following error:

  ERROR!!!

  Error informing the kernel about modifications to partition /dev/sda1
  -- Device or resource busy.  This means Linux won't know about any
  changes you made to /dev/sda1 until you reboot -- so you shouldn't
  mount it or use it in any way before rebooting.

              -- http://imgur.com/HAOImlQ

So of course I launched Nautilus, ejected the two partitions I looked at 
(Nautilus told me about some error, but the little ⏏ icon disappeared),
opened a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T, ran sudo sfdisk -R /dev/sda to tell
the kernel to reload the partition table (and this time it succeeded
without error), then hit [Ignore] on that installer error dialog.

The usual setup, user account, etc.  I didn't ask for whole-disk
encryption, but I did ask for an encrypted home folder.

Whop-de-doop, installation proceeds merrily, marred only by little
buglets[+], so I start relaxing and doing stuff in a browser and an ssh
session in a maximized install, when suddenly, with no warning, the
screen goes black.  I assume the installer tried to reboot.

  [+] Buglet: the top panel shows time in UTC even after I chose the
      timezone in the installer.  Since that annoys me, I launch System
      Preferences, find Date/Time, and see that the LiveCD session also
      has the timezone set correctly, and shows my local time correctly.
      It's just the panel applet that didn't notice the timezone change.

      Bug not filed (yet).

Ok, so black screen, blinking WiFi LED, nothing happens.  I got tired of
waiting, tried Alt-SysRq, saw text-mode help messages on that black
backround.  Ctrl+Alt+Fx didn't do anything.  CapsLock didn't do anything
either, IIRC.

Ok, so Alt+SysRq+S,U,B to reboot for reals.  The new system boots, I get
a splash screen and an unexpected error:

  The disk drive for /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 is not ready yet or not
  present.

  Continue to wait, or Press S to skip mounting or M for manual recovery
        -- https://twitter.com/mgedmin/status/400623124695486464/photo/1

So I press S, since a system will run just fine without swap, mkay?
Only it doesn't boot.  The splash screen continues to animate the dots,
but nothing else happens.  Esc shows me this:

  * Starting SystemD login management service                       [ OK ]
  * Starting bluetooth daemon                                       [ OK ]
  * Starting mDNS/DNS-SD daemon                                     [ OK ]
  * Starting CUPS printing spooler/server                           [ OK ]
  * Starting cups-browsed - Bonjour remote printer browsing daemon  [ OK ]
  * Stopping Mount filesystems on boot                              [ OK ]
        -- https://twitter.com/mgedmin/status/400624065578532864/photo/1/large

repeated a few times.  As I sit there watching, I see a new repetition
show up after about 10 seconds.

Ctrl+Alt+Del works.  I trigger the GRUB boot menu by holding down Shift,
try booting in rescue mode, get a root shell, edit /etc/fstab to comment
out the /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 entry and uncomment the UUID=... swap
entry instead, then mkswap -U the-same-uuid /dev/sda5, then swapon -a
and verify that my swap works.  Then I quit the root shell with Ctrl+D
and boot stops with

  fakeinitctl called, ignoring something something
        -- no screenshot this time, I'm paraphrasing from memory

I Ctrl+Alt+Del and it reboots, I try a normal boot this time, and I get
a forever-animating boot splash again, only this time Upstart messages
no longer mention filesystems:

  * Starting SystemD login management service                       [ OK ]
  * Starting bluetooth daemon                                       [ OK ]
  * Starting mDNS/DNS-SD daemon                                     [ OK ]
  * Starting CUPS printing spooler/server                           [ OK ]
  * Starting cups-browsed - Bonjour remote printer browsing daemon  [ OK ]

10-second pause and again

  * Starting SystemD login management service                       [ OK ]
  * Starting bluetooth daemon                                       [ OK ]
  * Starting mDNS/DNS-SD daemon                                     [ OK ]
  * Starting CUPS printing spooler/server                           [ OK ]
  * Starting cups-browsed - Bonjour remote printer browsing daemon  [ OK ]

forever.

At this point I gave up, booted Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS LiveCD, and installed
it, choosing "erase entire disk" again.  This time I did not ask for
encrypted home, and the system appears to work fine.  (Well, it boots
fine, I just had to update the NVIDIA proprietary crap driver to avoid
a problem stale window images.)

I've no time to try and to reproduce this bug on this machine.  I could
try a VM, but only if I get some indication that I wouldn't be wasting
my time.

Marius Gedminas
-- 
<AdamV> SamB: PHP's basic control structure is the "database 
        timeout error".                       -- from Twisted.Quotes
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