ubiquity installation failures

I've made ubiquity itself automatically unmount partitions and warn if it can't. Evan, could you check out the comment about migration-assistant having a similar problem?

ubiquity (1.3.25) feisty; urgency=low

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * Handle spaces in usernames in migration-assistant. (LP: #89009)
  * Fixed list movement bugs on the Migration page. Also, selecting an
    item now selects the user as well. (LP: #89414)
  * The Migration page now auto-fills the username box, matching the
    behavior on the User Setup page. (LP: #89522)
  * Stopped the username auto fill on User Setup from clobbering the m-a
    username.

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * GTK frontend:
    - Don't reset partition_edit_mount_combo's cell renderer; doing so
      causes GTK warnings.
    - Add more space around text in question dialogs.
  * New partitioner: Allow changing the mount point for NTFS (LP: #90276).
  * Automatically unmount mounted partitions if they are on a changed
    partition table or they are to be mounted somewhere other than /media/*.
    Display an error and allow the user to try to unmount them manually if
    automatic unmounting fails (LP: #89605).
  * Work around datetime misbehaviour if the system clock is set before the
    Unix epoch (LP: #57952).
  * Add XS-Vcs-Bzr field to debian/control.
  * Automatic update of included source packages: console-setup 1.13ubuntu7,
    localechooser 1.37ubuntu1, migration-assistant 0.4.1, partman-auto
    62ubuntu6, partman-base 100ubuntu7, partman-efi 11ubuntu3.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Wed, 7 Mar 2007 15:21:48 +0000

It should already umount the drives in migration-assistant as I fixed that in a similar bug previously, however I will work a warning dialog into that code for cases where it cannot unmount the partition.

migration-assistant (0.4.2) feisty; urgency=low

  * Added XS-Vcs-Bzr field to debian/control.
  * Mount /home if necessary. (LP: 85222)
  * Display an error on unmount failure and prompt the user to continue.
    (LP: 89605)
  * Put usage statements on stderr. (LP: 89821)

 -- Evan Dandrea <email address hidden> Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:57:19 -0400

ubiquity (1.4.0) feisty; urgency=low

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Use just one progress message for all target-config hooks, to avoid
    uglinesses like "Running 32gnome_power_manager".
  * KDE frontend: In the partition create dialog, set the maximum partition
    size before setting the value to avoid the value being incorrectly
    clipped.
  * Disable the intro message for beta.
  * Add kboot-installer integration for powerpc/ps3. Explicitly detect the
    subarchitecture and select which boot loader to install based on it.
  * Automatic update of included source packages: grub-installer
    1.20ubuntu3, migration-assistant 0.4.2, partman-base 105ubuntu1,
    partman-partitioning 47ubuntu1, user-setup 1.8ubuntu2, yaboot-installer
    1.1.8ubuntu2.

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * When m-a is disabled, don't try to run its apply script. (LP: 89821)
  * If migration-assistant cannot unmount a partition, prompt the user
    to do it manually. (LP: 89605)
  * Added another descriptive label to the Migrate page.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Thu, 15 Mar 2007 03:41:04 +0000

I tried to install Karmic after having the (would be) root partition of the installation already mounted. Konsole was running and the current directory was the mounted one.

The installer warned me about the mounted partition and that it would try to unmount it (it informed me of a mounted disk /dev/sda). The installation process reached the final step when I was warned of the mounted partition again (as /dev/sda1 this time) and that a process was using it. Afterwards, a similar warning appeared for the mount state of the whole disk (/dev/sda).
Both times I selected to try to unmount the partitions after closing Konsole.

The installer offered a retry which led to a bug report form and the return to the partitioning step of the installer. I continued at that point but upon validating the partition table, the crash report appeared again and ubiquity crashed and exited.