Vincent Elliott's picture
Vincent Elliott - Sun, 2021/09/12 - 20:59

Hi,

I have tried to install both the CORE and MONGODB v16.1 appliances running under libvirt and the installation failed everytime when trying to install grub on an LVM disk.

The error reported is a "fatal error" irrespective of selecting any of the provided options except "Manually specifying the drive...".

This issue I have found is that grub defaults to trying to install to /dev/mapper irrespective of the selected target except as noted above "Manually specifying...".  In my instance I had to manually specify "/dev/vda" and then it worked without further issue.

As an asides, the hostnamectl command is missing and attempting to change the hostname from the confconsole menu does nothing...

Thanks again for the great effort in creating and making these applicances available.

Best regards and keep safe,

Vincent

Forum: 
Support
Tags: 
core mongodb grub lvm fatal error
Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Fri, 2021/09/17 - 00:15

What you note is a known issue with some VMware platforms, but I have not hit those issues on KVM, Xen or VirtualBox. I'm not sure why, but it seems that for some reason grub trips up on the drives as presented by some VMware virtualisation?!

Did you restart after changing the hostname? It definitely should work!?

Very Siberian's picture

Very Siberian - Sun, 2022/11/20 - 00:21

The same thing happened to me just now when installing one of the new TKL apps from the ISO using VirtualBox 6.1.40. Fortunately, Vincent's tip worked like a charm!

Best regards,

Rob

William Bryan's picture

William Bryan - Thu, 2022/12/01 - 17:05
I ran into the same issues with unbuntu + cockpit virutal machines (libvirt/kvm).  Thanks for the tip Vincent!!  It basically just ignores the selection and defaults unless you manually type in the drive.
Vision_Thing's picture

Vision_Thing - Fri, 2023/09/15 - 10:22
Thanks Vince :D Also had to select manually and specify /dev/sda Selecting /dev/sda does not work ... I had to specify Enter device manually and then /dev/sda Solved :D  
Gary Nowels's picture

Gary Nowels - Tue, 2024/12/10 - 23:39
can't this be fixed 1 1/2 later, sheesh 😔🤮
Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Wed, 2024/12/11 - 03:43

Hi Gary, I completely agree. It really sucks and I wish it wasn't so...

I would love nothing more than this to be fixed. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to reliably reproduce it (it rarely ever happens for me?!). Because of that, the cause (and therefore a fix) is not obvious. Rebuilding from source (every time code changes are made) and the intermittent nature of the bug has resulted in significant time going into this with no resolution to date (obviously)...

Due to lack of available resources and to ensure that we can continue to exist, we have to prioritize the needs of our paying users. We also have a mile long todo list and have to balance all the things that need to be done between the limited time and energy available to us. Between lack of reports from paying users, the time already sunk into this issue and the fact the workaround is simple, unfortunately we've had to focus on other priorities.

Regardless, we have some beta build code to completely replace the current custom installer we use (a module of which is where this bug occurs). That will provide support for UEFI boot (bare metal install) and more install flexibility (encrypted &/or alternate filesystem, etc). As it will be a complete replacement for our current software, I'm confident that it will also resolve this issue.

I hope to do some builds including this new process, ready for "real world" testing within the next week or 2. It will only be a couple of appliances initially, but it'd be great if you could assist with testing.

Hopefully you're willing to help out. If that doesn't work for you, perhaps there is some other way you could contribute? The more users can help out, the better we can all make TurnKey! :)

Just in case you are the first paying customer to experience this issue, apologies in advance. It would still be great if you could help with testing, but all financial contribution is a huge assistance.

Vincent Elliott's picture

Vincent Elliott - Wed, 2024/12/11 - 16:51
Hi Jeremy, I am no longer a paying customer, but who knows... In any event, I have benefited from using some of these appliances in my development efforts and am able to help with testing. Let me know how. I currently use a Debian based laptop and leverage libvirt for all my appliances. Vincent
Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Thu, 2024/12/12 - 00:55

Hi Vincent, thanks so much for your offer of assistance! You rock! :)

No problem that you're not a paying customer, any and all contributions are warmly welcomed. Your willingness to help out with testing is really appreciated. "Real world" testing by TurnKey users is invaluable and makes TurnKey better OOTB.

FYI I've just opened a new "meta" issue on our GitHub issue tracker with a subject of "Replace di-live with default Debian installer and leverage default Debian Live support". As I note there, implementing that should address this and another bug, as well as a number of feature requests.

Unfortunately a fairly significant issue with one of our popular appliances has come to light, so that has become the immediate priority. However this ISO build process update remains high priority. I anticipate internal testing will continue next week. Once we have confirmed that the new ISO boots and installs on a number of VM platforms and a couple of bare metal systems I have handy, then we'll do a public build.

I intend to report back here when we have something public and ready to test. But the above GitHub issue will track any progress between now and then. So please feel free to follow it over there as well if you want (notifications require a free GitHub account).

In the meantime, if you (or anyone else) is particularly keen, I'm happy to share how you could build a test ISO locally.

Vincent Elliott's picture

Vincent Elliott - Thu, 2024/12/12 - 01:40
Jeremy, Please share the test ISO local build instructions. It would be good background have when testing the appliances. Vincent
Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Thu, 2024/12/12 - 04:51

The project to improve the install process of our ISOs is called "tklive". It currently resides in Anton's (one of our devs') personal GitHub accounts, but we will merge it into the "official" TurnKey GitHub organization prior to "official" release. It's also not really integrated into our build infrastructure/process, but neither of those points should have any impact on building and testing an ISO using "tklive".

As noted in the tklive readme, you'll want to start with a TKLDev VM. Then build an ISO. The final step is to update the ISO with tklive.

Assuming that you use Core initially, the process should be pretty straight forward, but please report any issues you have along the way, including friction points or confusion caused by lack of clarity.

There is a "build a TurnKey appliance ISO from source" tutorial on the website that covers the process from start to finish. It is quite dated but should "just work". Although assuming that you have a TKLDev VM up and running, building a core ISO boils down to:

APP=core
cd $APP
make

For the last step, you'll need 'live-build' installed. I.e.:

apt update
apt install live-build

Finally:

mkdir lb
cd lb
lb config --config=https://github.com/turnkeylinux/tklive
lb build

Once that completes, there should be a "turnkey-core-amd64.hybrid.iso" in the current directory. Copy it out and install to a new VM for testing.

Thanks again for being willing and able to help out. Good luck with it and I'm looking forward to your experience and thoughts.

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