bug#36783: Guix graphical installation failure on all drives with size > 1 TiB

bug#36783: Guix graphical installation failure on all drives with size > 1 TiB

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi,

using the Guix graphical installation method, one cannot install Guix on a drive
with more than 1 TiB.  (symptom: "null pointer dereference" in mkpart)

The reason is a bug in guile-parted.

An example is to use the "separate /home" option with a 2 TiB disk.

The fix that lets me install is:

(for https://gitlab.com/mothacehe/guile-parted.git master)

diff --git a/parted/unit.scm b/parted/unit.scm
index 6818b7e..68862a8 100644
--- a/parted/unit.scm
+++ b/parted/unit.scm
@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@
                          out-range)))
       (if (return-int->bool result)
           (values (car
-                   (parse-c-struct c-sector (list int)))
+                   (parse-c-struct c-sector (list sector-type)))
                   (pointer->geometry
                    (dereference-pointer out-range)))
           (values #f #f)))))

However, even after that, disk-print, if used, prints nonsensical (negative)
values for "free" (but installation succeeds).

That bug prevents graphical installation on any drive bigger than 1 TiB.
Let's make a bugfix Guix release shortly.

bug#36783: Guix graphical installation failure on all drives with size > 1 TiB

[Mathieu Othacehe]

Hello Danny,

> However, even after that, disk-print, if used, prints nonsensical (negative)
> values for "free" (but installation succeeds).
>
> That bug prevents graphical installation on any drive bigger than 1 TiB.
> Let's make a bugfix Guix release shortly.

Your fix seems ok for me, thank you! I don't get why you negative values
though. I'll try to find a big hard drive to understand this before
pushing this patch.

Thanks,

Mathieu

bug#36783: Guix graphical installation failure on all drives with size > 1 TiB

[Mathieu Othacehe]

Hello,

> Your fix seems ok for me, thank you! I don't get why you negative values
> though. I'll try to find a big hard drive to understand this before
> pushing this patch.

I still don't have a big enough hard drive to test it, but I applied
your patch anyway. If someone with hard drive > 1 TiB is willing to
investigate why:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
[disk-print] prints nonsensical (negative) values for "free"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

that would be nice :)

Thanks,

Mathieu