[Bug 1283240] Re: Corrupted filenames in ISO Ubuntu 12.04.4 Server amd64

Fri Apr 4 02:41:04 UTC 2014

Oliver,

The bug report (which I embarrassingly authored) mistakenly suggested
the problem was with the iso itself.  But as I said in the first
comment, the actual problem is with at least two different windows-based
creator facilities: LiLi and unetbootin.  I was on a Windows XP machine.
I don't know if the problem exists with other Windows releases.

Currently, LiLi and unetbootin are the first two utilities listed on the
official Ubuntu documentation for how to create an installation flash-
drive from a windows machine, and neither of them work:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick#Creating_a_bootable_Ubuntu_USB_flash_drive_from_Windows

I think the page should be immediately updated to either remove
reference to these flaky USB creation facilities (until they fix their
respective problems); or if the problem affects only certain
combinations of windows&Ubuntu releases, then update the page to
describe which releases work and which ones don't.

That would be better than letting people continue to bang their head
against the wall wondering if they have a bad flash drive, or if they
did something wrong, or whatever.  (I had to do a lot of drywall
repairs.)  I don't know who's responsible for help.ubuntu.com web pages,
or how to make them aware of this issue.

I've had an email exchange with the LiLi developer, he is at least aware
of the problem and has seen it himself with some server releases.  If I
understood him correctly, the problem is rooted in some windows-based
mechanism for reading ISOs.  He hopes to find a work-around, but was at
the time of our communication busy with other tasks.

Anyway, that's my best understanding of this problem at this time.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1283240

Title:
  Corrupted filenames in ISO Ubuntu 12.04.4 Server amd64

Status in “debian-installer” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  This bug report notes the same problems described in bugs 1161771 and
  1130381, but is filed separately to make it clear it also applies to
  the lastest 64 bit LTS server release.  Likely, it applies to other
  releases as well.

  In the ISO named ubuntu-12.04.4-server-amd64.iso downloaded from this
  URL:

                    http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server

  these 29 files have all had both their extensions truncated to 3
  characters and their root names (not counting leading path names)
  truncated to 61 characters.  So counting the "dot" character, they
  have all had their base file names trimmed to a total of 65
  characters:

  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/block-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd6.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/crypto-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/firewire-core-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~preci.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/floppy-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/fs-core-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_am.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/fs-secondary-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precis.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/input-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd6.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/ipmi-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd64.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/irda-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd64.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/message-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_am.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/mouse-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd6.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/multipath-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/nic-pcmcia-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/nic-shared-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/nic-usb-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_am.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/parport-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_am.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/pata-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd64.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/pcmcia-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/pcmcia-storage-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~prec.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/plip-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd64.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/sata-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd64.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/scsi-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd64.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/serial-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/speakup-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_am.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/squashfs-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_a.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/storage-core-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precis.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/virtio-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/vlan-modules-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise1_amd64.ude
  ./pool/main/l/linux-signed-lts-saucy/kernel-signed-image-3.11.0-15-generic-di_3.11.0-15.25~precise.ude

  Before someone suggests that the ISO is fine and that the filenames
  must have been clobbered by whatever tool I was using to examine the
  ISO file, know that the ISO file has independently been examined by
  windows 8 file explorer, zip7, Windows ISO Mounter, and WinRAR and
  they all show these same truncated file names.

  So what you say?  Is this really a problem?  I'm guessing it must NOT
  be a problem for normal CD-based installations (perhaps CD drivers
  expect long file names to be shortened???) or you would have had too
  many complaints to be ignroed, but for my USB installations these
  clobbrered names are causing much grief.  I have attempted to build an
  installation flash drive with this ISO using both LiLi USB Creator and
  unetbootin-windows-585.exe.  With both tools, the USB copies these
  files along with their truncated names perfectly.  No surprise there.
  But attempting to install from such a USB results in the following
  error while loading installer components:

  There was a problem reading data from the CD-ROM. Please make sure it
  is in the drive. If retrying does not work, you should check the
  integrity of your CD-ROM.

  Failed to copy file from CD-ROM. Retry?

  Once I realized what the problem was (which took me an entire day), I
  modified all of the file names above so they all consistently ended
  with the string "precise1_amd64.udeb" and then everything worked.

  You say maybe my USB drivers are just finicky?  They are asking too
  much to expect the encoded filenames to match the requested filenames!
  Well, there have been at least two others that have taken the effort
  to submit bug reports documenting this same problem (as noted above).
  One was closed as invalid.  The other was simply ignored and timed
  out.   In addition, there are countless forum posts where people have
  documented and discussed this same problem.  Here are just a few:

  http://askubuntu.com/questions/127398/usb-drive-install-of-ubuntu-12-04-server-fails-cant-find-components-from-cd-r
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1538056
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2152193
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1692104

  This "Official" Ubuntu documentation tells people you can install
  Ubuntu from a flash drive and list LiLi and unetbootin-windows as
  tools to create the bootable flash drive from windows:

  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

  But it doesn't work.

  Thanks for reading.

  Matt Busche
  Lakewood, CO

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