Public bug reported:
The installer allows filesystems to be put onto an entire disk, bare any
disklabel.
However, when doing so, the filesystem formatting (ext3 in my case) hangs (a).
Moreover (b), when using such a whole disk for the root filesystem and choosing
"Rescue a broken system" in the bootloader on the installer CD, the device will
not appear in the menu "Enter rescue mode: Device to use as root filesystem".
A workaround for (a) is to enter a parallel console during formatting,
identifying the hanging mkfs.ext3 process using ps, killing it and
issueing the mkfs command by hand (*). The installer will say that the
partitioning process failed and drop back to the partitioning options.
Select to NOT format the device and continue.
Since at the point (*) I was asked for confirmation (because I used the
entire disk), I suspect this is the reason for the formatting to hang
after all.
A workaround for (b), in case you know what to fix right away after
installing, is to NOT reboot at the end of the installation, but instead
to go into a busybox shell and chroot into /target.
I am preparing intrepid to be used some time in the future on my production
system. In order to avoid the notoriously buggy upgrade path, I prepared an lvm
logical volume for the root filesystem and made it accessible to a virtualbox
virtual system. Thus, I needed to install the root system on a "whole disk".
I suspect there are less complicated situations where this bug is triggered.
** Affects: ubuntu
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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Installer lacks support for using whole disks
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/299639
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