Manual partitioning crashes the installer with Offline method

Hi.
I installed today EndeavourOs on virtualbox (6.1.6) with VBoxSVGA, 3D and EFI .
With latest iso 2020.04.11 md5sum ok
Start the Installer.
Offline method.
…Select storage device
If I select before “Erase disk” and after “manual partitioning” and Next, the installer crashes.
Message : install finished (UTC) date and time but keep the disk empty.

Same method but select directly “manual partitioning” …nothing to report.

I don’t know if the cause is : virtualbox, the installer…etc

If someone can check please.

Cheers

Hello @monbureaulinux
I’m not sure why you would select erase disc and then after manual partitioning unless of course you had changed your mind? Normally erase disc with no swap or with or without hibernate with swap. Or you can do 100% manual partitioning. Erase disc is automatic after making your selection and continue. If you select manual partitioning and this is in v-box install then the space you reserved in v-box is unallocated. It might have just been software glitch that caused the crash. So in manual partitioning you take the unallocated space and create a new GPT partition. Then you create each partition such as EFI. Then the other partitions you need and want such as / root, / home, and swap. You have to mark the EFI partition as /boot/efi and /boot. EFI partition is formatted as fat32 and the root and home ext4 and swap is left as swap.

Hopefully you tried again and got it installed?

hi ricklinux.

I made a video on EndeavourOS, and for who want for example /home I said you can select “manual partitioning” and next…etc
For the video I selected “erase disk” and yes no problem after.
But with Online method, selected “erase disk” and just after “manual partitioning” not crashes the installer.

I’m not sure if i understand you but i just tried it both ways in v-box and it did not crash the installer. I’m not saying it can’t, I’m just saying it didn’t, and sometimes these things can happen on certain hardware.

I managed to crash the installer by going back and forth with the disk selections.
Calamares is not that robust when you select and then unselect things, possibly many times.
It works if you plan ahead and do things carefully.

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This is my first step on EndeavourOS, so I learn one thing with Calamares, plan ahead.
The system is light less 800 packages with Xfce.
My video here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ampv_cjxUio (horodatage available bug at 04:53).

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Very nice video. Maybe you could post it under the French language category.

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Merci pour ta vidéo, elle va être utile :ok_hand:

About Calamares, the behavior you are pointing is not new, that’s why we recommand also to use GParted to make the partition scheme before to use it. Calamares doesn’t like the come back between the choices on partition page… like the %bar during install which is better now…
Beyond that, Calamares is robust when you used it few times, I mean you could get your OS installed. Next version would bring lot of changes on its possibilities with QML…they are still lot of work on it to do, devs are very active on Calamares.

It’s not very intuitive. My first thought when arriving at that screen was: “OK, I’d like to start clean. Let’s erase the disk then set it up according to my needs.”
Instead of “Erase disk” The option should be called “Erase disk and setup partitions automatically.” or “Erase disk and let installer set up partitions for you.”

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Maybe it should just be Auto Partition?

good point!

There is also the issue of using msdos or gpt prior to this. Depending what the user is trying to do be it legacy or Uefi installation, using erase disk erases everything including whether or not you chose msdos or gpt. So when you think about it using this option when new to Linux can cause installation failures if you aren’t properly educated prior to using it or paying really close attention.

Thanks guys.
Today test : when gparted used before to make partition scheme, there is no problem for the installer even when I go and back. (nothing new here for you)
When the disk is empty, only one shot can break the installer, when Erase disk is select first and after the Manual partitioning.
The system installed and I played with yay instead of pacman.
Cheers

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