debian-installer partitioner doesn't properly clear labels

[Richard Laager]

Here are the steps to reproduce:

1. Create a partition. Leave the type as ext4. Set the label, for example: /srv
2. Go back to the partition listing.
(In real use, you then realize you made a mistake in step one.)
3. Edit the first partition. Change the type to swap.
4. Create a second partition. Leave the type as ext4. Set the label to the same thing used in step one, for example: /srv
5. Confirm that you're done edition partitions.

Actual result: Error message about duplicate labels.
Expected result: No error.

I further tried deleting the first partition and re-creating it as swap again. That still failed. I had to change it back to ext4 so I'd see the label (still /srv), clear the label, and then set it back to swap.

The partitioner should clear the stored label whenever you change the type to something where the label field goes away. (It can't save it to disk anyway with something like swap, which is why it isn't shown.) It should also clear the label when you delete a partition.

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release (10.04)? Thanks in advance.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[Richard Laager (rlaager)]

Yes, this is still an issue with 10.04. The issue is that the partitioning tool is keeping the label, but not showing it for swap partitions. This is because an msdos partition table doesn't support labels, so the label has to be applied to the filesystem within the partition and swap partitions don't support labels. The fix is to clear the internal label state when the user completes the editing on a partition with a filesystem that doesn't support labels.

[Richard Laager (rlaager)]

I re-tested. This is still an issue in 16.04.