elementary OS 6 installation hangs at 70% for various l18n settings

[cshaa]

What Happened

I've tried it on at least three computers and with three different versions of elementary OS 6 (Beta 2, RC, stable) and they all displayed the same behavior: if I choose Czech as the language of the installer, the installation hangs at 70 % and never finishes. Installing in English (US) fixes the problem.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Download an Elementary OS .iso, put it on a flash drive and boot it
2. Choose “čeština” as the installer language
3. Go through the installation (the specific choices don't matter much, I've tried Custom Installation as well as Erase All)
4. The installation hangs at “Nastavuje se systém (70 %)“

Logs

The last output in the terminal is:

INFO: running "chroot" "/tmp/distinst.sbHpHHbIvPM7" "apt-get" "purge" "-y" "btrfs-progs" "casper" "cifs-utils"
"discover" "discover-data" "distinst" "dmraid" "elementary-live" "expect" "f2fs-tools" "fatresize" "finalrd"
"gettext" "gparted" "kpartx" "kpartx-boot" "libatkmn-1.6-1v5" "libcairomm-1.0-1v5" "libcroco3" "libdiscover2"
"libdistinst" "libdmraid1.0.0.rc16" "libf2fs-format4" "libf2fs5" "libglibmm-2.4-1v5" "libgtkmm-3.0-1v5"
"libnss-mymachines" "libpangomm-1.4-1v5" "libsigc++-2.0-0v5" "libtcl8.6" "libusb-0.1-4" "localechooseer-data"
"mokutil" "reiserfsprogs" "systemd-container" "tcl-expect" "tcl8.6" "user-setup" "wingpanel" "xfsprogs"
INFO:
INFO:
INFO: Načítají se stavové informace...
INFO: Následující balíky budou ODSTRANĚNY:
INFO:   btrfs-progs* casper* cifs-utils* discover* discover-data* distinst* dmraid*
INFO:   elementary-live* expect* f2fs-tools* fatresize* finalrd* gettext* gparted*
INFO:   kpartx* kpartx-boot* libatkmn-1.6-1v5* libcairomm-1.0-1v5* libcroco3*
INFO:   libdiscover2* libdistinst* libdmraid1.0.0.rc16* libf2fs-format4* libf2fs5*
INFO:   libglibmm-2.4-1v5* libgtkmm-3.0-1v5* libnss-mymachines* libpangomm-1.4-1v5*
INFO:   libsigc++-2.0-0v5* libtcl8.6* libusb-0.1-4* localechooseer-data* mokutil*
INFO:   reiserfsprogs* systemd-container* tcl-expect* tcl8.6* user-setup* wingpanel*
INFO:   xfsprogs*
INFO: 0 aktualizováno, 0 nově instalováno, 43 k odstranění a 0 neaktualizováno.
INFO: Po této operaci bude na disku uvolněno 47,3 MB.

Which roughly translates to:

...
INFO: Loading state information...
INFO: The following packages will be REMOVED:
...
INFO: 0 updated, 0 freshly installed, 43 removed and 0 unchanged
INFO: After this operation, 47.3 MB will be freed on the disk.

Walkaround

Install elementary in English (US) and choose the proper language on first startup.

Platform Information

Tried on:

• elementaryos-6.0-stable.20210810.iso
• elementaryos-6.0-stable.20210805-rc.iso
• elementaryos-6.0-daily.20210430.iso (Beta 2)

[cshaa]

Related issue on StackExchange: https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/q/28242/19079

[gandalfthewhite19890404]

Same thing if you're chosen Russian language.

[cshaa]

As described by another Czech user on StackExchange:

I've tried it too and if I selected Czech language and US keyboard, instalation aborted at the begining. If I selected US language and czech keyboard it has stucked at 70 percent. In complete english it worked well.

    — Jiří Florián

[jcmvbkbc]

When installing it in russian and installation hangs the following is visible in the /var/log/syslog:

[jeremypw]

If it is limited to a particular language it is likely to be a translation error e.g. missing or changed placeholder. This will cause a crash. Need to review the Czech .po file.

[jcmvbkbc]

@jeremypw It looks like an issue in the code that reads output of the helper program (in that case, apparently apt), see 13th line from the bottom on the screenshot.

[jeremypw]

There is at least one possible C format error in the Czech translation (https://l10n.elementary.io/translate/installer/installer/cs/?q=check:c_format). I am not that familiar with the code of this project to say whether it causing this crash, but locale dependent problems are often down to translations.

[gandalfthewhite19890404]

What is wrong with Russian? Because I had same issue but with Russian language.

[jeremypw]

Admittedly I could not find any C format problem with the Russian translation (although plenty of other languages had potential problems see https://l10n.elementary.io/checks/c_format/installer/installer/). So the issue may be due to a translation problem in a helper program - or something else entirely I guess. Looking at the log again there is a thread panicking during some sort of string manipulation ("byte 41 is not a char boundary ....") so maybe the code is not manipulating a string in locales with multibyte characters properly :shrug:

[jeremypw]

@davidmhewitt Are you able to shed any light on this?

[davidmhewitt]

This looks like it would be an issue with distinst as it would be that calling on apt and other helper programs during the installation.

I'd like to do a bit more investigation on this before I say for sure though as we have diverged a bit from Pop!_OS on the way we use distinst vs them, especially around language handling.

[cshaa]

Bump, any update on this? Looks like it's still an issue :c

[kirush0280]

the same problem with russian language, its hangs on 70% after apt purge

[ChildishGiant]

I'm installing OS 7 nightly (Admittedly on a VM) in UK l18n and have this issue too

[cshaa]

Yeah, elementaryos-7.0-daily.20220211.iso seems to get stuck at 70 % even for English (US). At least on a VM. Might be for a different reason though.

[dbzix]

What an awful experience. Got the same 70%-stuck with Russian installation. Twice. Elementary? Well, okay then...

[jcmvbkbc]

This looks like it would be an issue with distinst as it would be that calling on apt and other helper programs during the installation.

I'd like to do a bit more investigation on this before I say for sure though as we have diverged a bit from Pop!_OS on the way we use distinst vs them, especially around language handling.

I've got some time to fiddle with this issue. I start installation in virtual machine (run it like this: qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2G -cdrom elementaryos-6.1-stable.20211218-rc.iso -hda disk) and when graphical interface appears I switch to console and run distinst manually like this: distinst -b /dev/sda -h test -r /cdrom/casper/filesystem.manifest-remove -s /cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs -t /dev/sda:gpt -n /dev/sda:primary:start:end:ext4:mount=/ -l ru_RU.UTF-8. This reliably reproduces the issue for me when I use distinst from the cdrom. However when I clone the mentioned distinst repository and build it myself (under debian 11 or elementary) the resulting binary does not exhibit this behavior and distinst runs to the end (legitimately failing for a different reason at the end).

I have two questions: 1) how can I get debug info for the distinst or the original unstripped binary that is shipped on a CD? and 2) is there a way to do a reproducible rebuild of the distinst (so I get the same binary that is on CD)?

[noangel]

same error when selecting japanese language

[cshaa]

Just wanted to mention that I really like elementary and use it as my main OS, but I think that this install experience is just unacceptable. It's such an opaque problem and a horible first-time experience that it sincerely makes me feel bad for recommending elementary to other people. I know elementary has a small team and a lot of things to solve, but seriously – how is this not a priority?

[nazar1ua]

@davidmhewitt

[1280px]

Fixed in OS7

[lenemter]

I cannot reproduce the issue with Russian and Czech languages, so I assume it was fixed.