installer crashes when finding/creating boot partition on primary hard drive

[Bobby Smith]

When using the ubiquity installer from live cd, installer can't find partition when trying to write /boot to sda (primary hard drive device), which is already home to a Windows partition. Trying to delete and create instead, causes the installer to crash.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: ubiquity 2.8.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.19-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.284
Date: Tue Oct 4 16:32:32 2011
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Beta amd64 (20111004)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Exception during installation:
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: Traceback (most recent call last):
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 1632, in <module>
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: install.run()
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 55, in wrapper
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: func(self)
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 199, in run
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: self.configure_bootloader()
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: File "/usr/share/ubiquity/plugininstall.py", line 955, in configure_bootloader
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: "GrubInstaller failed with code %d" % ret)
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py: InstallStepError: GrubInstaller failed with code 1
Oct 4 16:32:27 ubuntu plugininstall.py:

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Some more details:

Oct 4 16:31:59 ubuntu ubiquity: Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
Oct 4 16:31:59 ubuntu ubiquity: grub-probe: error: unknown filesystem.
Oct 4 16:31:59 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Installing grub on '/dev/sda'
Oct 4 16:31:59 ubuntu grub-installer: info: grub-install supports --no-floppy
Oct 4 16:31:59 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --no-floppy --force "/dev/sda"
Oct 4 16:32:01 ubuntu grub-installer: Installation finished. No error reported.
Oct 4 16:32:01 ubuntu grub-installer: info: grub-install ran successfully
Oct 4 16:32:01 ubuntu ubiquity: Can't read partition table from /dev/sda

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

You appear to be using a fakeraid and attempted to bypass the raid and install directly to one of the underlying disks. You must not do that.