[Bug 875343] Re: Stuck at "Saving installed packages..." when using a custom /var

[Marco Gamberoni]

Installing from scratch Ubuntu 18.10, with a customised full disk encryption partitioning scheme.
After setting up separate encrypted volumes with new filesystems for these mountpoints: 
   / /boot /home swap 
I started 
   ubiquity
and forgot -b so it completed fast but crashed at end (it is a known bug: on a FDE setup -b is needed, grub must be installed after configuring GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y in /etc/default/grub).
So, I restarted with the switch
   ubiquity -b
and met this "bug". Which isn't, at least in one, my, case. It's a "feature": finding an existing installation, ubiquity uses dpkg-repack to save the customisations and transport them to the new installation; this takes very long time, enough to find and read the preceding 45 posts...
In case of a new installation, kill ubiquity and restart recreating empty filesystems is quicker than waiting the repacking of the whole release.

OTOH, there seems to be also real bug described here: when /var is a
mountpoint.

Rethinking, there are 2 bugs. One is in front of the keyboard. Those who want to keep the existing customised configuration should not reinstall, but should should perform a
   do-release-upgrade
Catering for those who reinstall but want to keep previous settings is a bug, I say.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/875343

Title:
  Stuck at "Saving installed packages..." when using a custom /var

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  The installer hangs forever at message "Saving installed packages" under certain conditions. Steps to reproduce:
  - Start gparted, create GPT partition table and create big enough partitions as follows:
  - /dev/sda1 formatted as ext4
  - /dev/sda2 formatted as ext4
  - Start Ubiquity
  - Use default options until you reach "Installation Type"
  - Choose "Something else"
  - Choose usage of partitions and mount points as follows (do NOT format!)
  -- /dev/sda1 on /
  -- /dev/sda2 on /var
  - Hit "Install now" (ignore the warning)
  => Installer will then hang forever. Last message it displays is: "Saving installed packages"

  I have tried this with 14.04 live CDs (daily build) on a physical
  machine and VMs and it always shows this behaviour.

  Some notes:
  - You can avoid the problem, if you mark / or /var (or both) for formatting
  - It only seems to happen with a separate /var partition. If only /usr is different, everything works as expected
  - The problem did not exist in previous installers (before Ubuntu 11.10)

  The reason why I do not want to format with Ubiquity is because I have
  pre-formatted my partitions with special parameters which I cannot set
  in Ubiquity.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
  Package: ubiquity 2.17.1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.12.0-7.15-generic 3.12.4
  Uname: Linux 3.12.0-7-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.12.7-0ubuntu2
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperVersion: 1.336ubuntu1
  Date: Tue Dec 17 01:55:05 2013
  LiveMediaBuild: Xubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Alpha amd64 (20131216)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US
   TERM=xterm
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: ubiquity
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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