[Bug 1041881] Re: Reinstalling a large server (without formatting) appears to hang during 'Cleaning up' due to updatedb.mlocate

[Shrenik]

Had started installation on a server with around 1 TB of data in
partitions not desired to be formatted but mounted them during
installation and in the first instance could not even detect what could
be holding the installation process at 97%. Hence rebooted which
obviously landed me a broken system. Reinstalled and yet again hit the
same issue. Thereafter, thanks to James found this bug already reported.

Killed the updatedb.mlocate process to work around this issue and get
the installation through.

I suggest to leave updatedb.mlocate to the first boot via cron, if at
all it must run automatically and definitely better information should
be presented in the installer instead of just "Cleaning up" .

It definitely left a bad taste in an otherwise smooth installation.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1041881

Title:
  Reinstalling a large server (without formatting) appears to hang
  during 'Cleaning up' due to updatedb.mlocate

Status in “pkgsel” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  I've just reinstalled a server for a 3rd party using Ubuntu 12.04.1
  Server AMD64. I did so non-destructively, i.e. chroot'ed into what
  would become /target, did 'mkdir old-machine; mv -iv * old-machine/'
  and then had the partitioner re-use the partition as / without
  formatting it.

  After installing packages, the install seemed to hang at 97% saying it
  was 'Cleaning up'.  When I logged in on another console, I discovered
  it was running updatedb.mlocate, presumably across the entire disk,
  including the original contents.  After about 20 minutes, it
  eventually finished and the install continued.

  I'd suggest either:

   a) not running updatedb.mlocate unless all partitions are due to be
      formatted

  or

   b) improving the dialog/progress indicator to make it clear what's
      happening and that it may take some time if you had a lot of
      pre-existing data.

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