Crash report handling

Many Ubiquity bugs arrive in the form of cut-and-pastes from its crash helper dialog. In simple cases, these are often enough to completely diagnose the bug and allow a developer to fix it, which is why the crash dialog exists. However, if the crash occurs in install.py (the component of Ubiquity that actually constructs and configures the newly-installed system), then in Dapper a combination of technical awkwardness and lack of developer time means that the traceback from the crash dialog often ends like this:

RuntimeError: Install failed with exit code 1; see /var/log/installer/syslog and /var/log/syslog

(Edgy installations will produce a more verbose traceback.)

This traceback is moderately useless on its own, and you must not mark bugs as duplicates on the basis that they both contain a traceback such as this. In Dapper, the real error is hidden in /var/log/installer/syslog, so if the reporter didn't attach that, ask for it, and for /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman as well for good measure. Look for the traceback from the crash dialog in /var/log/installer/syslog and then trace up a little bit; the real error should be there, often in the form of a subprocess exiting non-zero.

Standard text for asking for log files in Dapper:

Could you please attach /var/log/installer/syslog, /var/log/syslog, and /var/log/partman to this bug, following the directions in http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingUbiquity/AttachingLogs? Thanks in advance.

Standard text for asking for log files in >= Edgy:

Could you please attach /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman to this bug, following the directions in http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingUbiquity/AttachingLogs? Thanks in advance.

Don't ask for /var/log/installer/syslog if the version of ubiquity in the log is 1.1.12 or greater (Edgy or later). Those versions of ubiquity send all log messages apart from certain detailed partitioning log messages to /var/log/syslog, and /var/log/installer/syslog no longer exists.

Please do not assign ubiquity bugs to anyone unless you're a ubiquity developer or you manage a ubiquity developer. Please don't reject ubiquity bugs unless you're a ubiquity developer. In general, please try to refrain from causing unnecessary extra bug mail noise for ubiquity developers or from taking items off their to-do lists without consulting them first.

Known bugs

Fixed

• [fixed in dapper-updates and Edgy] Crash if /boot is on XFS: Bug 47848

  This can be recognised by grub-installer exiting 10 or 30, and /var/log/partman or /var/log/installer/syslog (look for "mountpoints:" in the latter) indicating that / is on XFS and there is no non-XFS /boot filesystem. Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #47848, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report. Due to some reliability problems with GRUB and XFS, you need to use a non-XFS root filesystem or create a non-XFS /boot filesystem. The fact that the partitioner doesn't warn you about this up-front is also bug 47848, and is fixed in 6.06.1.

• [fixed in dapper-updates and Edgy Knot 1] Crash if system partitions are not reformatted: Bug 47046

  This can be recognised by an OSError exception being thrown from the copy_all function, usually "File exists" or similar, and a "mountpoints:" line in /var/log/installer/syslog that includes a tuple with a standard filesystem (e.g. /, /boot, /usr, or /var; not /home or /media/*) as the first item and False as the second item. Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #47046, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report. At present, you must reformat system partitions (e.g. /, /boot, /usr, or /var) during installation; the fact that the partitioner doesn't warn you about this is also bug 47046, and is fixed in 6.06.1. If you are upgrading an existing installation, then please see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DapperUpgrades rather than using this installer.

• [fixed in dapper-updates and Edgy] Crash if some packages on running live session are unconfigured: Bug 47859

  This can be recognised by a dpkg error in /var/log/installer/syslog while installing language packs, and a crash in the install_language_packs function. Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #47859, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report. This is also bug 47859, and can be worked around by not installing [substitute the package that broke here] in the live session before running the installer. This is fixed in 6.06.1.

  If one of the packages that broke was ntp, then use the following text:

  Thanks for your report. This is also bug 47859, and can be worked around by not choosing to install NTP support while running the installer. It can be installed after rebooting into the newly-installed system by right-clicking on the date/time applet and selecting "Adjust Date & Time". This is fixed in 6.06.1.

• [fixed in dapper-updates and Edgy Knot 1] Crash when installing in Chinese but with a non-Chinese-speaking country: Bug 47687

  This can be recognised by Chinese characters scattered through /var/log/installer/syslog and:

  ubiquity: ['sh', '-c', '/usr/lib/ubiquity/localechooser/post-base-installer && /usr/lib/ubiquity/localechooser/prebaseconfig'] exited with code 1

  Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #47687, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report. This is also bug 47687, and occurs when you select a Chinese language (either Simplified or Traditional) but then select a non-Chinese-speaking country on the timezone/country selection page. This is fixed in 6.06.1, so you can work around it by upgrading all packages with 'ubiquity' in their names on the running live CD before starting the installer.

• [fixed in dapper-updates and Edgy Knot 1] Crash with certain kinds of disk attached: Bug 48732

  This can be recognised by the following at the end of the traceback (ignoring line and byte number differences):

    File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ubiquity/components/partman.py", line 214, in run
      if not self.frontend.set_disk_choices(self.choices(question),
    File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ubiquity/filteredcommand.py", line 189, in choices
      choices = unicode(self.db.metaget(question, 'choices'), 'utf-8')
  UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 204-205: invalid data

  Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #48732, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report. This is also bug 48732, and occurs due to strange model names on certain disks. This is fixed in 6.06.1, so you can work around it by upgrading all packages with 'ubiquity' in their names on the running live CD before starting the installer.

• [fixed in dapper-updates and Edgy Knot 1] Crash when gparted crashes: Bug 48856

  This can be recognised by the following at the end of the traceback:

      print >>self.gparted_subp.stdin, "apply"
  AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'stdin'

  Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #48856, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report, which is also bug 48856. The program used for advanced partitioning, gparted, appears to have crashed. The version of the installer present in Ubuntu/Edubuntu/Xubuntu 6.06.1 deals with this more gracefully. If you can reproduce the gparted crash by running it directly from the System -> Administration menu, then please file a separate bug against gparted.

• [fixed in dapper-updates and Edgy Knot 1] Crash when qtparted crashes: Bug 47194

  This can be recognised by the following at the end of the traceback:

      print >>self.qtparted_subp.stdin, "apply"
  AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'stdin'

  Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #47194, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report, which is also bug 47194. The program used for advanced partitioning, qtparted, appears to have crashed. The version of the installer present in Kubuntu 6.06.1 deals with this more gracefully. If you can reproduce the qtparted crash by running it directly from K Menu -> System, then please file a separate bug against qtparted.

• [fixed in dapper-updates and Edgy Knot 1] Crash when hw-detect fails to load a module: Bug 48524

  This can be recognised by the following in /var/log/installer/syslog just before the traceback:

  ubiquity: ['/bin/hw-detect'] exited with code 1

  (AND ONLY THAT EXIT CODE!) and the following as the last message about hw-detect in /var/log/syslog:

  Aug 24 18:02:10 ubuntu hw-detect: Detecting hardware...

  Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #48524, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report. This is also bug 48524, and occurs due to a failure to handle module load errors on certain hardware. This is fixed in 6.06.1, so you can work around it by upgrading all packages with 'ubiquity' in their names on the running live CD before starting the installer.

• [fixed in Feisty Herd 2] Crash if language packs are uninstallable in certain ways: Bug 61912

  This can be recognised by the following traceback from install.py (in 6.06, you'll need to look in /var/log/installer/syslog):

    File "/usr/share/ubiquity/install.py", line 1347, in ?
      install.run()
    File "/usr/share/ubiquity/install.py", line 335, in run
      self.install_language_packs()
    File "/usr/share/ubiquity/install.py", line 807, in install_language_packs
      self.mark_install(cache, lp)
    File "/usr/share/ubiquity/install.py", line 734, in mark_install
      assert cache._depcache.BrokenCount == 0
  AssertionError

  If self.mark_install is not present in the traceback, then it is a different bug. Otherwise, feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #61912, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report. This is also bug 61912, and occurs due to a failure to handle uninstallable language packs. You can typically work around this by installing in English or by disconnecting from the network during installation.

• [fixed in Hardy Heron] Crash when autopartitioning and disk is too small: Bug 48355

  This can be recognised by IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device being thrown inside the copy_all function, and stepPartAdvanced not appearing in /var/log/installer/syslog; also check the end of /var/log/partman to make sure that the size of the disk is smaller than about 2.5GB (I'm not sure of the exact figure). Feel free to mark such bugs as duplicates of #48355, with text such as:

  Thanks for your report. I'm afraid that one of your partitions seems to be too small to complete an Ubuntu desktop installation successfully. Bug 48355 notes that the partitioner should have warned you about this. This has been fixed in Hardy Heron.

• [fixed in Hardy Heron - ubiquity version 1.7.9] Ubiquity dialogs too large for 800x600 display: Bug 38442

  The timezone map used in ubiquity was a static size and larger than 800x600 so it was challenging to use ubiquity with hardware that would use a display resolution lower than that. It is possible that some duplicate bug reports still exist and they should be marked as a duplicate of 38442 with text such as:

  Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.  This bug is a duplicate of bug 38442 and is being marked as such.  Incidentally, this issue is resolved in Hardy Heron as the timezone map can scale down to 674x434. 

• [fixed in Hardy Heron ] Login sound plays while installing from the Live CD Bug 178057 During the installation process the login sound was being played multiple times. This was not strictly a ubiquity bug but rather a bug in debian-installer-utils. However, most of the bug reports about it will be filed about ubiquity.

Non-bugs

Certain hardware failures can often be reported as installer bugs. This includes faulty CDs, CD drives hard drives and memory.

Notes

The 'kernel command line' line of the syslog file contains information about the boot parameters used.

• Images created by unetbootin contain 'initrd=/ubninit' and / or 'BOOT_IMAGE=/ubnkern'

Also see:

• DebuggingUbiquity/AttachingLogs

• DapperReleaseNotes/UbiquityKnownIssues

• DebuggingUbiquity/DupCandidates

CategoryBugSquad CategoryDebugging