[Parted-maintainers] Bug#530909: Wrong message about device being busy

[Frans Pop]

On Monday 12 October 2009, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> I reported this issue in May and it's still there.  Other people have
> seen it too.  It doesn't matter whether you install to SATA, USB or MMC.
> This error doesn't show up all the time, but it shows up quite
> regularly. This is definitely a regression from lenny.

I've solved at least one bug in the past that showed the same error, 
especially RAID related IIRC [1].

These errors frequently depend on a specific starting position and/or a 
specific way of setting up the disk. If you get that right, then in my 
experience the error is reproducible.

> What's not great about this error:
>  - It's probably bogus.  At least I cannot see any errors in the logs.

I doubt that. It may be *harmless* in some (or maybe even most) cases, but 
that's not the same as bogus.

>  - The "ERROR!!!" string that doesn't really say anything at all.
>  - The choice "Ignore" and "Cancel".  I guess "Ignore" is "go ahead"
>    and "Cancel" is "go back", but there's a "go back" already.
>  - When I press "Go Back", it actually goes ahead to format the
>    partition (which worked fine).  In fact, all of the choices do
>    the same (go ahead).

Totally agreed that the presentation is sub-optimal.

These are hard issues to fix. In general they require full debug logging of 
partman and extensive analysis of the debug log. And after that you 
probably also have to dive into parted_server and libparted.

The real problem here is that nobody is currently making much effort to 
look into these issues (including me).

Don't hold your breath waiting for the libparted maintainers to fix this...
The debugging has to be done in D-I.

[1] #345251, #377391, #382689, #470374