Summary
Installation on Linux may fail due to a non-English locale.The error condition can be resolved by resetting the locale.
Symptoms
Installation on Linux may fail if the machine's locale is set to a language other than English.
In a specific case, for a German locale, the installation process fails with the following error:
Error: There has been an error.
Error running ifconfig | grep HWaddr : child process exited abnormally
Press [Enter] to continue :
Running ifconfig on the node displays the following:
bond0 Link encap:Ethernet Hardware Adresse x:x:x:x:x:x
inet Adresse:x.x.x.x Bcast: x.x.x.x Maske:255.255.255.0
Resolution
As evident from the error message and the ifconfig output, the installer is explicitly looking for string HWaddr
, representing the MAC address. However, in the German locale, for example, this string is altered to Hardware Adresse
, which causes the failure.
Use the following procedure to resolve this issue:
- Open the command terminal on the node and run:
export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
- Confirm the locale is set to
en_US
by running:
locale
- Run ifconfig and confirm the MAC address is represented now by
HWaddr
. - In the same shell, run the installation.
- Once the installation completes successfully, reverse the locale back to its original value, using the command from step 1 with the appropriate locale value. For example, for a German locale, use:
export LC_ALL="de_DE.UTF-8"
Note: This issue is fixed in DPX 4.2. or later