partman-auto 134ubuntu11 prevents installation from recovery partition

In Disco:
- .iso from a CD-ROM or USB stick is mounted as whole block device, i.e. /dev/sr0 /dev/sda
- .iso from a partition on disk (i.e. recovery partition) is mounted as a partition, i.e. /dev/sda1
- in partman-auto black-list is set on whole block device mounts, i.e. /dev/sr0 /dev/sda

In Eoan:
- .iso from a CD-ROM or USB stick is mounted as a partition, i.e. /dev/sr01 (?!) /dev/sda1
- .iso from a partition on disk (i.e. recovery partition) is mounted as a partition, i.e. /dev/sda1
- in partman-auto blacklist is set on either whole block device or partition mounts, i.e. /dev/sda /dev/sda1 etc.

So, that's where we are at.

So,

I think we should be sensitive to whether or not the device is RO or not. I.e. if one uses RO actual CDROM it should always be skipped.

Also we should be sensitive to disk size and not offer tiny devices for install.

And ideally, somehow, we shouldn't offer devices with /cdrom mount for "whole disk" installs but do offer them for "use-free install"

# If there's only one disk, then preseeding partman-auto/disk is
# unnecessary, and sometimes inconvenient in heterogeneous environments
if [ "$method" ] && [ -z "$disks" ]; then
        DEVS="$(get_auto_disks)"
        if [ "$(echo "$DEVS" | wc -l)" -eq 1 ]; then
                disks="$(cat "${DEVS%$TAB*}"/device)"
        fi
fi

I wonder if disks is preseeded or not.

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1847944

Looks good, let's just make sure to test it. My only nitpick was not break'ing after we find the partition, but as we discussed it anyway doesn't matter, since in most cases it will only expand to one thing.

Staging a PPA at

https://launchpad.net/~ci-train-ppa-service/+archive/ubuntu/3821/+packages

It would be nice if one could boot the recovery, upgrade ubiquity, from that ppa, and see if the autoinstall stuff still works correctly.

And I assume that one has called:

echo ubiquity partman/filter_mounted boolean false | sudo debconf-set-selections

or preseeded that key in any other supported way.

>I wonder if disks is preseeded or not.

Yes, a script detects the disk to install to, but it essentially ended up as:
d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda

>It would be nice if one could boot the recovery, upgrade ubiquity, from that ppa, and see if the autoinstall stuff still works correctly.

This will take a little effort to get slipstreamed into the test environment. I'll let you know.

>And I assume that one has called:
>echo ubiquity partman/filter_mounted boolean false | sudo debconf-set-selections
> or preseeded that key in any other supported way.

Yes:
d-i partman/filter_mounted boolean false

has been preseeded.

> It would be nice if one could boot the recovery, upgrade ubiquity, from that ppa, and see if the autoinstall stuff still works correctly.

Yes confirmed that upgrading to ubiquity 19.10.20 from that PPA before running installation works correctly now.

This bug was fixed in the package partman-auto - 134ubuntu12

---------------
partman-auto (134ubuntu12) eoan; urgency=medium

  * lib/auto-shared.sh: drop /cdrom check completely, and instead rely on
    partman-base/init.d/parted to correctly detect installation_medium
    devices, even when parted fails to parse the block device partition
    table. LP: #1847944

 -- Dimitri John Ledkov <email address hidden> Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:25:11 +0100

This bug was fixed in the package partman-base - 206ubuntu6

---------------
partman-base (206ubuntu6) eoan; urgency=medium

  * init.d/parted: even if parsing partitions fails, ensure that the block
    device that has /cdrom mounted is marked as
    installation_medium. Unless of course partman/filter_mounted is
    preseeded to false. Currently our isos are built such that partman
    fails to detect partititions, but blkid/sfdisk/kernel can. LP:
    #1847944

 -- Dimitri John Ledkov <email address hidden> Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:26:06 +0100