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

[Kent Baxley]

We got some additional help from Stuart Hayes at Dell.  After some
analysis and testing, he got the 4k drive to boot by creating a larger
fat32 partition than what we're creating right now:

The version of Ubuntu that you gave me (13.10) was creating a FAT32
filesystem (on the EFI system partition) that was only 100MB, but a
FAT32 filesystem on a 4K drive has to be at least 133MB or so--see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Size_limits (and
adjust for the fact that they are assuming sectors are 512 bytes).

On my hard drive, I manually created a new FAT32 partition that was
about 1GB, did "mkfs.vfat /dev/sda3" on it, and then mounted it and
copied everything from the 100MB FAT partition onto my new 1GB FAT
partition.  When I rebooted, UEFI firmware did recognize my new
partition as a valid FAT32 partition and would let me boot to it.

So the Ubuntu installer should just need to make sure the boot partition
meets the requirements of the FAT32 filesystem (i.e., at least 133MB or
so).

Stuart

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1065281

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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