Error trying to restore GPT partition tables. Exit returned code 4

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart said in Error trying to restore GPT partition tables. Exit returned code 4:

what I don’t understand with foguser account is that I have to delete it each time I run isntall.sh script, if not I’ve got an error message

Can you please post the exact error message you get. I am fairly sure you don’t mean the sgdisk error in the picture, right?! Probably you get “The account “fogproject” already exists and has been used to logon and work on this machine.”

PS: Turns out I forgot to update a database setting when we renamed the account. So you need to manually do that as well. Please go to FOG Configuration -> FOG Settings -> TFTP Server and update TFTP FTP USERNAME to fogproject.

About the partition layouts. We changed the was FOG finds fixed partitions a little bit and I guess your layouts are now failing to be resizable with the new method. Let’s see if we can figure out why.

For the first one:
We have the first three partitions that I would think should be marked as fixed and not altered. The first one is the recovery partition. Second the EFI boot partition and third is the so called Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR). Find all the type UUIDs here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
Now the forth partition is the one where Windows is installed and which I would expect to be found as resizable by FOG. But this is obviously not the case as we see :2:3:4 in the d1.fixed_size_partition file which I find strange! Can you please schedule a debug capture task on your master machine, boot it up and when you get to the shell run parted -l /dev/sda, take a picture and post here.

Now the second layout:
This is an interesting one. Here the EFI boot partition is last. As we detect this as fixed. Moving a boot partition would cause trouble in the old MBR days and we are still a bit conservative in deciding if we alter a partition or not because we hope to not break too many things. Now with the EFI boot partition being behind the Windows partition we are simply unable to resize your Windows partition in this layout. But this is nothing new for this kind of partition layout. FOG has not changed in that case in the last years.

It would be great to be able to handle those kind of partition layouts better but it’s a complex topic and many things can go wrong. So it would be a lot of work which we can’t do right now.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth first for fogproject account, I’ve got this message each time I run install.sh :

 * Configuring services

 * Setting up fogproject user................................../var/log/lastlog: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
Already exists

The account "fogproject" already exists and has been used to
logon and work on this machine. We highly recommend you NOT
use this account for your work as it is supposed to be a
system account!

Please remove the account "fogproject" manually before running
the installer again. Run: userdel fogproject

So I delete this user I installer run fine, until next time…
fogproject account is created on Debian but doesn’t appear on fog web UI when I display all users (there’s just fog and root account)

In .fogsettings file I’ve got this username

username='fogproject'
password='xxxxxx'

I’ve just updated TFTP username name (it still was fog)

For partition layout, for the first one with debug task I’ve got this

I tried to deploy it removing “:4” but same error

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Please run the parted -l /dev/sda command on the machine you capture the image from. The output you posted looks like you did this on a machine you are trying to deploy to. Sure this won’t give us the needed information. As well we need the full output on the screen! If there are characters missing (right or left or bottom) we might miss some important hint.

About the installer complaining about the user every time: This is because we check lastlog to see if the account was used to login to the machine. Please run: lastlog --user fogproject --clear to get rid of the entry in the lastlog file. After that the installer should not complain anymore. I will add that to the information output of the installer soon.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth said in Error trying to restore GPT partition tables. Exit returned code 4:

lastlog --user fogproject --clear

ok, for machine I capture image I’ll test tomorrow.

For lastlog command it returns an error : No such file or directory

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart said in Error trying to restore GPT partition tables. Exit returned code 4:

For lastlog command it returns an error : No such file or directory

I cannot imagine the command lastlog is not installed. I just verified on a fresh clean minimal Debian 9.9 install. Probably try typing the command instead of copy&paste. Because sometimes characters like the dashes -- come out differently if copy&pasted.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth lastlog command is installed but doesn’t return any result for fogproject user, and same problem for fog and root account ! I just don’t understand, very strange…

For error deploying image, I tried to uplaod image on another computer and now I’ve got this…

Debug command parted -l /dev/sda give this

I don’t understand but I’m leaving office now for a big week-end until monday, I’ll chek this next week !

Thanks
Matthieu

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart I am not sure we’ll get to anything here. There are too many strains of topics combined in one forum thread. This makes it very hard to follow and quite often we seem to mix up things here.

For the parted -l /dev/sda output it would have been interesting to see the one with the four partitions.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth Ok I continue test, upgrading image to 1903 but still same problem.
So these are results on PC I used to update masters, Dell Optiplex 3020 with SSD 128GB. I have no problem to upload and deploy image on this model, but all others models failed with “Error trying to restore GPT partition tables. Exit returned code 4”

d1.partitions :

label: gpt
label-id: 24A810B8-1662-11E9-AB92-B083FE947687
device: /dev/sda
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 250069646

/dev/sda1 : start=        2048, size=   248742296, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, uuid=24A810B5-1662-11E9-AB92-B083FE947687
/dev/sda2 : start=   248745984, size=     1116160, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=5F6E777F-5719-4379-A14B-0397E0C234B2, attrs="RequiredPartition GUID:63"
/dev/sda3 : start=   249862656, size=      206848, type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, uuid=24A810B6-1662-11E9-AB92-B083FE947687

d1.minimum.partitions :

label: gpt
label-id: 24A810B8-1662-11E9-AB92-B083FE947687
device: /dev/sda
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 250069646

/dev/sda1 : start=        2048, size=    55035482, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, uuid=24A810B5-1662-11E9-AB92-B083FE947687
/dev/sda2 : start=   248745984, size=     1116160, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=5F6E777F-5719-4379-A14B-0397E0C234B2, name="attrs=\x22RequiredPartition GUID:63"
/dev/sda3 : start=   249862656, size=      206848, type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, uuid=24A810B6-1662-11E9-AB92-B083FE947687

d1.fixed_size_partitions :

:3:2:2:3

And for parted -l /dev/sda command :

Thanks
Matthieu

[Quazz]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Pretty weird layout, that’s not going to be pretty on devices with larger or smaller disks.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Quazz yeah, strange layout I agree
Any way to restore a good layout (gparted or else) ?

[Joe Gill]

@phishphan Did you read this? Looks similar to what you’re experiencing.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Well GParted might be able to shuffle around the partitions for you. It’s a GPT layout and hopefully a real EFI setup. Moving the boot partition (now sda3) might work without breaking the whole thing. But I highly recommend you take a sector by sector backup copy of that machine first before trying!

Make the smaller partitions first and then the larger data/windows partitions last.

[drumnj]

I ran into the same issue. Upgraded to 1.5.6 and got this error when deploying my image. It was working on 1.5.5 before I updated, then recaptured a new image. If it helps…the 1.5.6 captured image doesn’t work, but the 1.5.5 captured image does. Used the same image that was captured on 1.5.6 on both versions, get this error. Using the 1.5.5 captured image on both versions, no error.

Running:
Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Hyper-V

[Sebastian Roth]

@drumnj Please don’t cross post those kind of partition layout issues!!! Each and every partition layout is different - peroid and therefore every one of those issues is kind of different too.

Please open a new topic and post at least d1.partitions, d1.minimum.partitions and d1.fixed_size_partitions of your particular image as well as the image you just uploaded. Thanks!

[drumnj]

@Sebastian-Roth Looks like it’s the same type of error. I did my tests using the same checkpoint on my image, multiple times, so nothing changed with my partitions, just the FOG version. I’m just going to stick with 1.5.5 since it works. I’ll test again when another version comes out.

[Sebastian Roth]

@drumnj If you don’t give us your particular partition layout details we can’t fix the issue (if there is one in 1.5.6). It’s as simple as that!!

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth Ok I have same issue on another computer with standard layout, I think it coul be related to Win10 1903 update ? If I upload image before sysprep and deploy on another configuration, it’s ok. But if I sysprep and then capture image, deploy failed

d1.fixed_size_partitions
:2:2

d1.minimum.partitions
label: gpt
label-id: 6A1C2439-885F-11E9-BB12-1866DA164C99
device: /dev/sda
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 250069646

/dev/sda1 : start=        2048, size=       24940, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=6A1C2436-885F-11E9-BB12-1866DA164C99, name="attrs=\x22RequiredPartition GUID:63"
/dev/sda2 : start=     1979904, size=      202752, type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, uuid=6A1C2437-885F-11E9-BB12-1866DA164C99, name="attrs=\x22GUID:63"
/dev/sda3 : start=     2182656, size=    46627670, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, uuid=6A1C2438-885F-11E9-BB12-1866DA164C99

d1.partitions
label: gpt
label-id: 6A1C2439-885F-11E9-BB12-1866DA164C99
device: /dev/sda
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 250069646

/dev/sda1 : start=        2048, size=     1977856, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=6A1C2436-885F-11E9-BB12-1866DA164C99, name="attrs=\x22RequiredPartition GUID:63"
/dev/sda2 : start=     1979904, size=      202752, type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, uuid=6A1C2437-885F-11E9-BB12-1866DA164C99, name="attrs=\x22GUID:63"
/dev/sda3 : start=     2182656, size=   247886848, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, uuid=6A1C2438-885F-11E9-BB12-1866DA164C99

I passed this script but same result

dism /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup
dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth
dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
sfc /scannow
chkdsk C: /f

[Quazz]

@Matthieu-Jacquart 1903 is no problem on my end, though I must highlight I’m confused by your partition layout.

On a standard W10 GPT install you’d expect 4 partitions (minimum), and on a standard MBR install you’d expect 2.

What FOG version you on?

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Quazz It’s fog 1.5.6.4 with latest kernel (4.19.36 and 4.19.48).
Indeed I’ve got 2 images with 4 partitions (one is hidden 16MB, not showed on disk manager but listed with diskpart) and no problem to deploy these ones, but on 2 other images there’s just 3 partitions (OEM, system and windows) and I’ve got trouble on different configuration…
So it may be related to mbr2gpt command I use to transform legacy to UEFI but I made it for my 4 images and 2 only are ok, I don’t know why and how to fix that…

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Beside the layout being a bit weird with the three partitions it actually looks very good for being properly re-sizable! The smaller unmovable partitions are in the front (sda1 and sda2) while the big Windows partition is last.

Interesting that you were not able to deploy this. Let me ask you a few questions:

1. What size is the disk you captured the image from?
2. What size is the disk you tried to deploy it to?
3. Can you please schedule another deploy on this machine but schedule as debug this time!? Start the task as usual till you hit the error and get back to the shell. Now run the following command
4. Can you please upload d1.mbr of that exact image to a fileshare and post a link here?

This one you just posted reminds me on a topic that we had some weeks ago. In the end I think it turned out to be a very strange partition start number issue that was only in the d1.mbr file but not in the text-based partition layout files. I still have no idea why something like this would happen: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/13220/error-trying-to-restore-gpt-partition-deploying-an-image-to-smaller-disk