Using Wubi I get No root system defined, cannot install ubuntu

[Richard Barber]

I am running the latest version of WindowsXP. I have a 90GB C drive, 298GB D Drive. Windows is installed on my C drive. I went to the Ubuntu web site and download the ubuntu installer for windows. Everything downloads fine. I select D as the installation drive, I give 30gb of space, I enter passwords and select install. It says everything is installed do you want to reboot. I say yes. Once it reboots it tries to verify the install and then I get "No Root System Defined". I cannot get by this point. I have tried it several times. I have checked the web for a solution to this problem, have not found an answer. Seems as though a number of people are having the same problem. I f you need or want more information feel free to contact me at <email address hidden>. Thank you

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

moving to Wubi project, since it has nothing to do with ibus-table-wubi, but rather the wubi installer or something else in Ubuntu.

[bcbc (bcbc)]

This happens quite frequently. The most common reasons are minor partition table errors that don't bug Windows, but the ubuntu installer won't ignore (or perhaps the tools it is using). e.g. running "sudo parted -l" will often kick out an error. It can also happen with unsupported fakeraid setups (raid 0 and 1+0 seem to be affected). Finally, a disk that used to have a GPT partition table can cause this issue.

The best thing to do is boot a live CD and run the http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/ as it will often show the partition table errors in the fdisk output (and fdisk also reports GPT partition table mixed with MBR partition tables). Also fakeraids show up.

It would be nice if the installer kicked out a decent exception message though. PS this isn't a wubi issue since it's the Ubuntu install (ubiquity that's failing) and typically users having this problem on Wubi also report it failing on a normal install.

[Richard Barber (thebarbers)]

The problem is solved thanks to bcbc. You pointed me in the right direction. The problem was the drive I was trying to install ubuntu on did not have a partition. When I installed it on another drive with a valid partition it worked fine. Thanks again.

[bcbc (bcbc)]

On 11.10 with the preinstalled image, you no longer get the 'no root file system defined' error since this is issued by ubiquity. Instead it just kernel panics with: 2.171639 Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on disk-block(0,0)
See here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11354484&postcount=785

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

If this is still an issue (which it sounds like it may not be), then we'd need the partman log from the installer (/var/log/partman immediately after it crashes) to debug this. It'd probably be significantly easier to extract that from a non-Wubi install attempt.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Closing due to lack of response.