Initialize disks properly in kickstart

[lclementi]

Since centos 6.3 the
clearpart --all --initlabel
does not clean anymore all the partition table on the disk but it prompt for user input before proceeding.

This problem happen only when there is a corrupted partition on the disk which anaconda can't recognize, it does not happen if the disk has a standard dos partition. (It happened to me with a disk I took out of a old broken thumper)

For this reason we need to put a zerombr in the kickstart so anaconda will stop prompting users. I'm wondering what kind of repercussion this might have, and if it is worth to make this change.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart#zerombr

Luca

http://serverfault.com/questions/411023/centos-kickstart-on-kvm-doesnt-clear-partition-labels

@ppapadopoulos
@tcooper

[tcooper]

Think I just ran across this on sdb of a vm-container appliance that I had been doing disk testing with (writing random data with dd and /dev/urandom). My node installation is stuck at (from /tmp/storage.log)...

19:24:15,523 DEBUG   : scanning sdb (/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:05:00.0/host0/port-0:1/end_device-0:1/target0:0:1/0:0:1:0/block/sdb)...
19:24:15,523 DEBUG   : looking for device 'sdb'...
19:24:15,523 DEBUG   : found None
19:24:15,524 DEBUG   :        DeviceTree.addUdevDiskDevice: name: sdb ;
19:24:15,525 DEBUG   : sdb is a disk
19:24:15,525 DEBUG   : getFormat('None') returning DeviceFormat instance
19:24:15,527 DEBUG   :            DiskDevice._setFormat: sdb ; current: None ; type: None ;
19:24:15,527 DEBUG   : added disk sdb (id 0) to device tree
19:24:15,527 DEBUG   : looking up parted Device: /dev/sdb
19:24:15,528 DEBUG   :        DeviceTree.handleUdevDeviceFormat: name: sdb ;
19:24:15,529 DEBUG   :         DeviceTree.handleUdevDiskLabelFormat: device: sdb ;
19:24:15,529 DEBUG   : getFormat('None') returning DeviceFormat instance
19:24:15,530 DEBUG   :          DiskDevice.setup: sdb ; status: True ; orig: False ;
19:24:15,546 DEBUG   : required disklabel type for sdb (1) is None
19:24:15,546 DEBUG   : default disklabel type for sdb is msdos
19:24:15,546 DEBUG   : selecting msdos disklabel for sdb based on size
19:24:15,547 DEBUG   :           DiskLabel.__init__: device: /dev/sdb ; labelType: msdos ; exists: True ;

After zeroing out the first few MB of the drive and rebooting the install continues past the above with...

  name = sdb  status = True  parents = []
  kids = 0
  id = 0
  uuid = None  format = <storage.formats.disklabel.DiskLabel object at 0x7f5c8ab80c10>  size = 286168.148438
  major = 8  minor = 16  exists = True
  sysfs path = /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:05:00.0/host0/port-0:1/end_device-0:1/target0:0:1/0:0:1:0/block/sdb  partedDevice = <parted.device.Device object at 0x7f5c8ab80a10>
  target size = 0  path = /dev/sdb
  format args = []  originalFormat = DeviceFormat instance (0x7f5c7a30fd10) --
  type = None  name = Unknown  status = False
  device = /dev/sdb  uuid = None  exists = True
  options = None  supported = False  formattable = False  resizable = False
  removable = False  partedDevice = <parted.device.Device object at 0x7f5c8ab80a10>
20:35:40,269 DEBUG   : got format: DiskLabel instance (0x7f5c8ab80c10) --
  type = disklabel  name = partition table (MSDOS)  status = False
  device = /dev/sdb  uuid = None  exists = True
  options = None  supported = False  formattable = True  resizable = False
  type = msdos  partition count = 0  sectorSize = 512
  align_offset = 0  align_grain = 2048
  partedDisk = <parted.disk.Disk object at 0x7f5c8ab93510>
  origPartedDisk = <parted.disk.Disk object at 0x7f5c8ab93690>
  partedDevice = <parted.device.Device object at 0x7f5c8ab93450>