installer does not detect an installation of DragonflyBSD with UFS

[Ken Sharp]

As part of the QA ISO testing I have hit upon the following issue:

“Select Install Kubuntu XX.XX alongside SYSTEM YY
(SYSTEM YY is the name of the system already installed on disk (Kubuntu 12.04, Windows 7, ...)”

With DragonflyBSD installed, the installer cannot see it and the option to install alongside is never shown. Tried with UFS, HAMMER and HAMMER2.

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

Confirmed on latest noble there is no install alongside option.

[Ken Sharp (kennybobs)]

Turns out it can detect a previous install of Kubuntu, but when rebooting the Grub screen isn't even shown (I assume it defaults to 0 seconds - sorry I haven't checked on that yet).

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

It gives the option to install alongside? Maybe my partition wasn't big enough.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/2062075

[Ken Sharp (kennybobs)]

I tested on a 20 GB disk image. The installer shrank the existing partition to around 9 GB and installed alongside it. There was also the option to install over the existing installation.

[ԜаӀtеr Ⅼарсһуnѕkі (wxl)]

One caveat with Calamares is that while it supposedly tries to unmount before getting drive information, this doesn’t always work. One reason why is because the Ubuntu platform auto mounts swaps. That said, I’d try to check what’s mounted and unmount before starting the installer.

[Aaron Rainbolt (arraybolt3)]

Installed Windows 10 Home allowing it to use the entire SSD of my test system.
Booted Kubuntu 24.04 ISO.
Install alongside option appeared, used it.
Installation succeeded.
Upon reboot, I was presented with a GRUB menu, providing both "Ubuntu" and "Windows Boot Manager" options. Selecting "Ubuntu" boots me into Kubuntu 24.04, selecting "Windows Boot Manager" boots me into Windows 10.

I cannot reproduce this bug.

[Ken Sharp (kennybobs)]

Tried Win10/NTFS again and it seemed to work. I installed Win10 updates but I'd be surprised if that made a difference. Possibly a file system issue last time I tested. Tried Win11/NTFS too and it found that.

With DragonflyBSD, though, the issue is the same. I'd expect the HAMMER file systems to fail but UFS to be detected.

[ԜаӀtеr Ⅼарсһуnѕkі (wxl)]

And this is also an issue with Kubuntu Jammy, thus the reason this points at Ubiquity, too?

[Ken Sharp (kennybobs)]

It is an issue with Jammy too. I sent it to Ubiquity because that's what the QA instructions said to do. Hopefully it's correct.

[ԜаӀtеr Ⅼарсһуnѕkі (wxl)]

Then it is correct that this affects Ubiquity in Jammy (presumedly Mantic, too) but Calamares in Noble (with Kubuntu)

[Aaron Rainbolt (arraybolt3)]

I haven't heard of UFS until today, and I don't think Calamares supports it.

[ԜаӀtеr Ⅼарсһуnѕkі (wxl)]

I certainly don't think it's reasonable to expect any installer outside of the ones DragonBSD-related distros use to recognize HAMMER(2).

[Ken Sharp (kennybobs)]

I **thought** there was a ufs-utils package but I must have dreamt it. There is a kernel module for UFS though.

The HAMMER filesystems were never ported anywhere outside of DFBSD that I know of.

Tested Mantic for funsies and the behaviour is the same.

[ԜаӀtеr Ⅼарсһуnѕkі (wxl)]

Ok, so trimming the description down to UFS.

Even then, I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect that installers would detect it. I mean, AFAIK, UFS support is limited to read only. Which should be sufficient, but, that may explain why it's poorly supported.

[ԜаӀtеr Ⅼарсһуnѕkі (wxl)]

I'm going to take invalidating Ubiquity here to mean "no, we don't support UFS (or HAMMER(2))" and am going to apply the same logic to Calamares.