Dell m1330 mbr needs overwriting

[Benson Margulies]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

I feel as if I'm swimming upstream, but I write to complain about the opposite of a whole series of reports: I'm unhappy that the gutsy live CD install failed to replace the stock Dell MBR.

The stock Dell MBR for this laptop supports two 'boot' buttons: the power button and the mediadirect button.

If you do what I did, and install gutsy on the entire HD, but don't overwrite the MBR, pushing the media direct button will trash your hard drive, by rewriting the partition table. This is not especially kind of dell, but I have higher hopes that Ubuntu might save others from this unpleasant fate that befell me.

[Bram Vandoren (bram-bram)]

This is a problem in the mediadirect installer. It overwrites the hard disk without warning. Dell should provide a way to disable this button or change the behaviour of the installer.

I doubt this should be fixed in Ubuntu but agree this is a problem.

[Benson Margulies (bimargulies)]

Far be it from me to defend Dell. It does seem to me, however, that there might be room for offering people more assistance / options in deciding what to do with the MBR.

Some thoughts:

When I tell Ubuntu to reformat and install over the entire HD, I would expect it to overwrite the MBR.

With or without that idea, how about a query of the user like:

"Your hard drive already contains a non-zero Master Boot Record. You can either keep it or have Ubuntu replace it. If you are only planning to run Ubuntu, we recommend replacing it. If you are setting up your system to boot multiple operating systems and you need to preserve the existing MBR, then keep it."

This would not involve any special 'footsie' with the insane Dell code, and might also avoid other mysterious issues for other people some day.

[TerryG (tgalati4)]

Triaged to Confirmed. Reporter brings up good points about what ubiquity may encounter, especially with Dell computers.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Unless you choose to install grub to a partition instead, the MBR *is* overwritten during installation. If this button continues to function, then it must be a function of the bios, and there's nothing we can do about that.