[Parted-maintainers] Bug#705851: libparted0debian1: Assertion in dos.c:662 in probe_partition_for_geom()

[Ross Boylan]

Package: libparted0debian1
Version: 2.3-12
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,
Note that this bug may affect the wheezy installer; 
see Bug#705790: Installation hangs starting up the partitioner.
I do not know the two are related, but I'd guess they are.

   * What led up to the situation? ran gparted from a Debian Live started by
USB stick on a system with no internal drives but one external one connected 
by USB 2.0.  When it launched it scanned partitions and currently says
"Searching /dev/sda partitons."  An error popup said 
"Libparted Bug Found! (as superuser)" with the text
Assertion (head_size <= 63) at ../../../libparted/labels/dos.c:662 
in function probe_partition_for_geom() failed

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?  
1. Tried fdisk, with expected results:
root at tempserver:~# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 3926 MB, 3926949888 bytes
16 heads, 16 sectors/track, 29960 cylinders, total 7669824 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        8064     7669823     3830880    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
root at tempserver:~# fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204883968 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525164 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

sdb is the real drive connected by USB; it has never been formatted.

2. Ran gparted /dev/sdb from command line.  This launched and did not experience
an error. I was able to create a partition table and a partition.  That
was my original goal.

gparted /dev/sda reproduces the error.

   * What was the outcome of this action?

The workaround appears to have succeeded.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?
Worked the first time.  No error for /dev/sda.


Additional info: the USB stick is mounted on a USB 3.0 port; when I attempted
to use them for a keyboard in a slightly different environment (netbooting)
it did not work.  I gather there are known bugs in USB 3.0 handling in linux.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages libparted0debian1 depends on:
ii  libblkid1           2.20.1-5.3
ii  libc6               2.13-38
ii  libdevmapper1.02.1  2:1.02.74-7
ii  libuuid1            2.20.1-5.3
ii  multiarch-support   2.13-38

libparted0debian1 recommends no packages.

Versions of packages libparted0debian1 suggests:
pn  libparted0-dev    <none>
pn  libparted0-i18n   <none>
pn  parted | nparted  <none>

-- no debconf information