Maverick installer lost Windows partitions

Update: I recreated the Dell and Windows partitions then restored the contents from a backup. The disc contained only sda1 and sda2 (values identical to the fdisk output above) with the remainder of the drive unallocated. I tried installing again as above.

The disk partitioning app failed to do what I expected. Its only suggestion was to try to shrink sda2 to fit in a small Maverick install in the free space in it. It totally ignored the 247GB of contiguous unallocated space following sda2.

It just popped into my head that when the partitions were being prepared it said that sda1 was being formatted. I think what may have happened here is that the partitioner hasn't noticed that the sda1 and sda2 partitions already existed and called my / and swap partitions sda1 and sda2, overwriting the entries for the Dell and Windows partitions in the partition table.

This bug affects me too! It trashed a drive on my test PC, Windows reference installation, Ubuntu 9.10 reference installation, and a data backup partition (with the Windows partition images. Rats!). This was a *show stopper* for me.

It took forever to get my drive back together again, I am not geared up to install Windows, it was a real pain.
I was gobsmacked and spent the following two days doing systematic user level tests to verify that it was not in fact my fault.

My tests, which *repeatedly* verified this problem, on two different machines, were as follows:

Use a single hard drive PC with disposable drive contents.

I used an Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop Live CD (32 bit in my case) md5 checked and also CD self checked ok.

I created two partitions on the drive, one NTFS and one ext4. It did not make much difference ultimately however I deliberately made one partition bigger than the other, using a number of size conditions.

I began the install process, chose 'Install alongside other operating systems'.

Then I chose the option button 'Use Entire Partition'
(note: I carefully deliberately avoided 'the whole drive')

I could see that the partitioner had identified a partition, and it was shown in the GUI display in a valid way (eg /dev/sda5) and I could also see the resizing option slider, which I did not use.

I was confident that 'Use Entire Partition' meant what it said, I proceeded.

I then found that the whole drive was trashed, and the Ubuntu 10.10 new installation took over the WHOLE drive!

I chose "use entire partition" and it erased every partition on my netbook, which I most certainly did not tell it to do. Now the restore partition on my netbook is gone, and now I'm thoroughly screwed since the netbook didn't come with a restore CD (since there's no optical drive).

This bug has 100% damage rate to those unfortunate people who have put their confidence into the one particular installer option. It is devastating. I sincerely hope that it will not be carried forward into the next release.

It looks like my bug 682429 is an actual duplicate of this but I'll leave that decision up to the devs.

Possibly related are:

bug 655950
bug 652852
bug 657397

Hopefully the devs can get something done with this soon.

I'm sticking my neck out here and subscribing the Ubuntu Installer team.

I also marked bug 682429 as a duplicate.

Other related bugs are referenced in the previous post.

This truly is a distro killer!

Seeing Colin assigned to this bug just made my holiday brighter ;^)

In order to save him time I thought I'd provide somewhat of a review, particularly since my test results at bug 682429 are lengthy and often repetitious. This appears to always be reproducible if only primary partitions exist on the disc, it can be either 2 or 3 primary partitions which is a common layout for existing Windows installations. So I'd concluded that if an extended partition existed this would not happen but Paul Stimpson's info seems to prove that assumption false.

That brings us to bug 655950 which I think is at the root of the problem. Please take time to read this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/682429/comments/27

We've offered potentially destructive options that add no actual "value" to the procedure. As I've stated previously the "Install alongside" option has a specific target group, that being Windows users for the most part, and they don't understand Linux device designations, please look at posts 1, 2 and 8 here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1647379

They not only don't get it, often they almost refuse to get it :^/

Of course immediately there is only one thing we can do for Maverick and that's add something appropriate to the Maverick release notes. Then we can work on correcting things for Natty.

I look forward to working with you on this.

"Of course immediately there is only one thing we can do for Maverick and that's add something appropriate to the Maverick release notes. Then we can work on correcting things for Natty."

Actually, is there better hope than that? Sometimes there's an xx.x.1 release of Ubuntu. If there's any hope of a 10.10.1 then fixing this is a huge opportunity that mustn't be missed. Perhaps it's even a good enough reason alone for a 10.10.1?

I thoroughly endorse the comments that others have made, here and in the related bugs... typically you only have one chance to make a good impression with a new user. Wiping out their system means most won't try Linux again for several years and it's hard to believe they won't tell the story to their friends. This term I started helping a group of 20 inexperienced XP and Vista users. I was looking forward to exposing them to Ubuntu and setting up any willing guinea pigs with a dual boot. Thank Goodness I saw this bug (because it was reported by a friend at my local LUG, otherwise I would have been blissfully unaware) and could shelve the idea until such time as there's a release I can trust again.

@ JohnWashington,

LTS releases have four "point releases", ie: 10.04 is LTS - therefore we're at 10.04.1 and there will be three more "point releases".

Maverick (aka: 10.10) is not LTS and I seriously doubt you could get an exception to have a new iso released.

If you still want to employ your experiment I'd recommend that you use Lucid (10.04.1) and also point out that the six month release cycle continually introduces new and innovative changes, but sometimes those changes can also result in bugs and/or regressions.

I tried to address this in a forum thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1622388

'If you still want to employ your experiment I'd recommend that you use Lucid (10.04.1).....'
Unfortunately I have found that 10.04.1 even with updates is less stable than 10.10. in a few cases 10.04.1 is unusable because of graphics problems. To install 10.04.1 and then to upgrade to 10.10 very soon is not an optimal way to introduce newcomers to Ubuntu.

There will be extra work in producing 10.10.1, and there will inevitably be some bad publicity. Compare this though with the bad publicity when somebody high profile gets hit with the worst of this bug?

In Open Source there is nowhere to hide. That is a big reason why I am using it.

10.10.1 will take courage to do. I will be disappointed if we chicken out.

An alternative has been built:

ppa:serge-hallyn/grub-multipath

Patch grub-mkconfig to use blkid instead of grub-probe, because
    grub-probe balks on /dev/mapper/{WWID} entries.

@Erick Brunzell
Thanks, I'd not realised the difference in point releases that LTS makes.

I still agree with candtalan, a 10.10.1 would be a brave decision, but there have been many brave decisions in Ubuntu's history... what's the most effective way to press for this?

@dino99
Thanks for this. However, even though I managed to add the ppa to my system I have no idea about how to create a new iso live CD. If I could get that far, then I would want to publish the iso, for example I have a public event in a couple of weeks time when I expect to hand out at least a dozen CDs. I do not currently have the experience nor knowledge to create and manage such a situation. (Although I love the idea of having my own ubuntu fork.......)

@ dino99,

I see no actual specs regarding that PPA and I fail to see how that could possibly help.

After much repetitive testing I'm absolutely convinced that this is actually a duplicate of bug 655950 but I'm waiting for a developer to agree.

As long as confusing options exist someone is bound to mistakenly use those options at some time or other.

After a bit more reading it appears that PPA addresses the issue of grub2 not detecting an existing Windows OS.

Since Paul Stimpson attached no actual system logs I can't be certain that such was not the case, other than taking his word for it, but if you look at bug 682429 you'll see logs that make it perfectly clear this has nothing to do with grub2.

The existing partitions are actually overwritten! And partitioning changes are made earlier in the installation process than grub installation which is one of the last things to take place during install.

@Erick,

This report is about "Maverick installer", well maybe too vague as P. Stimpson start the installation from scratch and use partitionning.
My issue is without partitionning, as it happen after an os-prober update: the previous grub-menu was ok, then it miss everything but ubuntu(s). To be clear, this os-prober update have erased the windows bootloader.

@ Erick
"As long as confusing options exist someone is bound to mistakenly use those options at some time or other."
I question the use of the word 'mistaken' here.

I agree it is not logical to have, in the 'Install side by side' facility, an option button for install in complete hard drive', however, my practice in earlier installers was always to use a target unused space on the drive or earmark a certain partition. So the option which is marked 'Use Entire Partition' *would* in principle be logically included under 'Side by Side' (note).

Whether actual confusion is created in the user, and if so, why, is debatable. However, my own use of one of these options was most certainly not 'mistaken', it was very *deliberate* and if the function had actually worked and the indicated partition had been taken over completely, I would have been delighted.

Note: When 'Side by Side' is chosen the installer itself decides (not the user) which partition becomes the target for resize or take-over. This has both pros and cons.

Also affects Natty iso-testing daily build of date 2011 January 03

How exactly is this incomplete, harry?

If more testing or verification is needed please say so. Be sure to check the duplicate as I attached logs there.

I can assure you that this is 100% reproducible if only primary partitions are present, which is what most Windows users would encounter.

If an extended partition exists it's a crap-shoot. Sometimes it will actually use the "entire partition" as selected, but sometimes it will wipe the whole disc!

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced that this is truly a duplicate of bug 655950.

That said I'm also aware of what candtalan said in post #18 but I'd argue that the "Use largest continuous free space" was a much better option, and certainly resulted in much less destruction of existing data. RE bug 652852.

Anyway I'm now marking this as a duplicate of bug 655950 because in my testing if the options to "use entire partition" and "use entire disc" simply did not exist after selecting "Install alongside" we'd see a reduction in the number of users reporting data/OS loss!

If anyone disagrees that's fine, but I expect a detailed explanation and some actual logs would be nice.

I have repeatedly tested the new ubiquity and if you totally ignore the two "Use entire" buttons while using the "install alongside" option I've not been able to reproduce the data/OS loss, and the proof is in the pudding.

I also renamed bug 655950 to Maverick ubiquity confusion w/ auto-resize option results in OS and data loss!

@ Erick
quote:
'but I'd argue that the "Use largest continuous free space" was a much better option,'
Yes, I strongly support an option to target the "Use largest continuous free space". It is pretty simple and has good clarity. And I almost always used to use it.....
If there is even half a chance of getting that particular option back any time soon, then yes please!