grub-installer fails to remove grub-pc when installing on EFI systems

[Charles Comstock]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

ubiquity tried to unpack nvidia-current, couldn't find it, fetched it, started unpacking, and immediately after that crashed. It then reverted to the live cd environment. It did not succeed in installing grub alongside the windows 7 loader, so what system is installed is unusable.

Separate note: this bug reporting method does not allow for multiple attachments and the partman log is too long to fit in this field.

EDIT: 4/19/2011 @ 8:31PM CT
I neglected to mention that this is an install to a 120gb ADATA SSD on an Asus P8H67-I, i5-2500k, 8gb ram, Geforce 560ti from a usb thumb drive. I don't know if any of the hardware is relevant beyond the thumb drive and the SSD however, but thought it pertinent to list if any applied.

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: ubiquity 2.6.5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Apr 18 17:12:09 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/ubiquity-dm
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.7
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Beta amd64 (20110417)
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/ubiquity-dm vt7 :0 hostname /usr/bin/ubiquity --only
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
PythonArgs: ['/usr/bin/ubiquity-dm', 'vt7', ':0', 'hostname', '/usr/bin/ubiquity', '--only']
SourcePackage: ubiquity
Title: ubiquity-dm crashed with ValueError in command(): invalid literal for int() with base 10: ''
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups:

[Apport retracing service (apport)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this crash and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular crash has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug #652916, so is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

I'm removing the duplicate because it is not.

The errors from the logs are
Apr 18 22:11:28 ubuntu ubiquity: Unpacking nvidia-settings (from .../nvidia-settings_270.29-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb) ...
Apr 18 22:11:28 ubuntu ubiquity: Processing triggers for man-db ...
Apr 18 22:11:28 ubuntu ubiquity: VERSION 2.0
Apr 18 22:11:28 ubuntu ubiquity: dpkg: error processing man-db (--unpack):
Apr 18 22:11:28 ubuntu ubiquity: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

Then an error with grub which trigger an ubiquity traceback:
Apr 18 22:11:28 ubuntu grub-installer: info: architecture: amd64/efi
Apr 18 22:11:28 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Identified partition label for /dev/sda5: msdos
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching grub
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching grub-legacy
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of grub-pc:
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu grub-installer: grub-gfxpayload-lists depends on grub-pc (>= 1.99~20101210-1ubuntu2).
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu grub-installer: dpkg: error processing grub-pc (--purge):
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu grub-installer: dependency problems - not removing
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu grub-installer: Errors were encountered while processing:
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu grub-installer: grub-pc
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: log-output -t ubiquity umount /target/cdrom
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu finish-install: Disabling CD in sources.list
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: Exception during installation:
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: Traceback (most recent call last):
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 1528, in <module>
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: install.run()
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 56, in wrapper
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: func(self)
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 197, in run
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: self.configure_bootloader()
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 837, in configure_bootloader
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: "GrubInstaller failed with code %d" % ret)
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py: InstallStepError: GrubInstaller failed with code 1
Apr 18 22:11:29 ubuntu plugininstall.py:

I'm reaffecting to grub2

For reference partman and the relevant system logs are automatically attached.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This breaks installation on all EFI systems; we need to fix it for final.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package grub-installer - 1.60ubuntu3

---------------
grub-installer (1.60ubuntu3) natty; urgency=low

  * Remove grub-gfxpayload-lists in situations where we need to remove
    grub-pc (LP: #765270).
 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:47:46 +0100

[Charles Comstock (dgtized)]

I guess this should probably be a different bug report, but I'm guessing at least the grub portion is related. I downloaded the nightly yesterday, install went off fine, though when I clicked to reboot the kernel crashed just before actually rebooting. Pressed reset, the computer reboots, and immediatly starts booting into windows 7. Grub didn't even flash on the screen. So I rebooted into the live drive, and chrooted into my install on /dev/sda5, and re-ran grub-install /dev/sda, with the verification step. I then unmounted the chroot, and then rebooted from the live drive, which again the kernel crashed just before reboot. After pressing reset it again booted straight into windows without going through the grub menu.

So to recap, as far as I know I have a working version of ubuntu on /dev/sda5, and that grub-install is convinced that it worked, but that all it is useful for is booting directly into windows. I'm going to conduct one more experiment where I check to make sure that the config for grub actually recognized the 11.04 install, but other then that I can't think of a solution.

The kernel panic before reboot I'm guessing is unrelated but wasn't sure if anyone else had observed that.

[Larry Hastings (larry-hastings)]

Charlie: you must create a "/boot/efi" partition, of partition type EFI. Once you do your system will boot into Ubuntu. Ubiquity doesn't warn you of that.

[Charles Comstock (dgtized)]

Parted under ubiquity does not allow you to select the mount point if you select partition type EFI. So I used /dev/sda1 as EFI, which is where the windows 7 loader had been in an NTFS partition. I did not select that it should format, but it did format sda1, and now update-grub does not detect that I have windows. I told parted to ignore /dev/sda2, and so while I am certain I could manually mount that drive, I don't currently have a method for booting into windows. So now I have the opposite problem as before, where now I can only boot into ubuntu. This seems like a pretty critical problem this close to release, are EFI systems just this uncommon? I am happy to submit this to the proper bug channel, but I'm not well versed in where it should go.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Yes, that sounds like it may well be critical. Please file a new bug on the partman-efi package with full logs (/var/log/installer/syslog, /var/log/installer/partman, /var/log/installer/debug), and we'll look into it.

[Massimo Forti (slackwarelife)]

Hi the bug #817912 show the same problems for Linux Mint 11:

Jul 29 08:10:21 mint grub-installer: info: architecture: amd64/efi
Jul 29 08:10:22 mint grub-installer: info: Identified partition label for /dev/sda5: msdos
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching grub
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching grub-legacy
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of grub-pc:
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: startupmanager depends on grub | grub-pc; however:
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: Package grub is not installed.
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: Package grub-pc is to be removed.
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: dpkg: error processing grub-pc (--purge):
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: dependency problems - not removing
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of grub-gfxpayload-lists:
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: grub-pc depends on grub-gfxpayload-lists.
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: dpkg: error processing grub-gfxpayload-lists (--purge):
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: dependency problems - not removing
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: Errors were encountered while processing:
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: grub-pc
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint grub-installer: grub-gfxpayload-lists
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint ubiquity: umount: /target/cdrom: not found
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: log-output -t ubiquity umount /target/cdrom
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint finish-install: Disabling CD in sources.list
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: Exception during installation:
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: Traceback (most recent call last):
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 1551, in <module>
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: install.run()
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 56, in wrapper
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: func(self)
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 201, in run
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: self.configure_bootloader()
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 844, in configure_bootloader
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: "GrubInstaller failed with code %d" % ret)
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py: InstallStepError: GrubInstaller failed with code 1
Jul 29 08:10:23 mint plugininstall.py:

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Please do not reopen this bug. I'll unduplicate bug 817912 and handle it separately; it is in fact slightly different.