Problems with ext[34] bad-alignment detection

[Colin Watson]

Original question from Pat Cutty: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+question/175810

This problem occurred after I installed a clean 640 GB Seagate hard drive. Laptop is Thinkpad T510 with i5 and 4 GB RAM.

Essentially, whenever I try to install Ubuntu (regardless of whether I go for the automatic install option or partition manually) the presence of an ext4 partition anywhere on the partition proposal returns the following error (severely paraphrased)

The partition alignment for (whatever ext4 partition there is) is so-and-so bytes off. This will cause major performance issues. Etc.

It tells me I should go back, delete the partition, and re-create it, which should automatically fix the alignment. Doing so (clicking "go back") does nothing- I get the same error.

Hitting "continue" does not continue with the install. It does the same thing as "go back."

When doing an automatic install, it kicks me to the custom partitioning screen with the same error.

I tried a couple different filesystems, and discovered that only EXT4 causes that error. Setting ext4 as / or /home will cause that partition to be named in the error message. When I tried non-EXT4 partitions exclusively, (JFS for / and btrfs for /home) the installation continued as it should.

This could be a major issue as it basically means Ubuntu's default partitioning layouts will not work.

The only hardware difference is the new HDD. Before I swapped it in, EXT4 partitions returned no errors.

So I guess the question is... WTF?!

Addendum: ext3 also returns the same error, and using btrfs as / results in a GRUB install fail (which did not happen with the previous HDD.) Using JFS as / worked fine. I will now test the x86 version of Ubuntu and see what happens. The new drive is perfectly fine according to Palimpsest and a test install of Windoze also worked without issue.

Addendum 2 : It's definitely not the drive. The complete battery of Seatools tests found no issues. Also tried installing the drive in another machine (Gateway Atom-based netbook, model LT2104u) and the same thing happened. So it is something to do with the drive, but there's nothing wrong with the drive. Tried low-level zero format of drive with Seatools (which completed successfully) but this too had no effect on issue.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Pat, thanks for your report, and this definitely looks like a bug, but we need some log files to fix it. Could you reproduce this problem in the installer and then attach the resulting /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman files to this bug report? Thanks.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]