ubiquity hard disk not detected

[Franck78]

This bug exists since LTS16.04 and is present in LTS18.04 (beta1 20 april)

Gparted, filemanager, everyone is happy with the disk.

-can mount partitions
-can resize partitions....
-can copy from/write on

Only the installer (ubiquity) fails to see it.

When asking destination, it shows the usb-booted key and nothing more.
But it correctly selects the hard disk (/dev/sda) for grub location !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

parted (on 18.04 / 16.04) complains about sector size 512 linux 2048 physical (block descriptor)
Under a previous ubuntu, it's ok (3.16 kernel)

Exchanging this hard drive (WD10ears) is ok (but unwanted.

not a fancy bios, only AHCI mode and nothing, 2011 machine.

Hardware
Acer Veriton M430
hdd
 Model Number: WDC WD10EARS-22Y5B1
 Serial Number: WD-WCAV5E166338
 Firmware Revision: 80.00A80
 Transport: Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6

Included files : parted -l, dmidecode and hdparm -I

[Franck78 (fbourdonnec)]

moved the harddisk on another motherboard (but also athlon X6).

Same error. This drive have something not handled by the installer !

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

The installer uses parted so the problem is there. It also does not appear to be a problem with your WD10EARS. parted -l takes no argument, so your /dev/sda argument is ignored. The -l says to list all drives. It listed /dev/sda just fine, then moves on to another drive where it finds a bogus MAC partition table and complains about it. This often happens on a USB stick that has had the installation .iso dd'd to it, since it contains a hybrid DOS/MAC/ISO disk label and this isn't really valid. Choose ignore rather than cancel and it should print the table instead of bailing out.

[Franck78 (fbourdonnec)]

I circumvented this bug by 'dd'ing a fresh install onto the WD10EARS.

Given that "parted" correctly shows the disk and partitions on it, I'm more inclined to say
that the bug is in ubiquity solving (not finding) a solution (-erase disk, -install next-to window, -something else,...).
For some reason, it concludes only grub can be installed onto the WD10EARS.

I cannot access easily that disk now. So if you want to solve this, ask me precisely what is needed (status:New → Incomplete).

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

If it can't be reproduced then we can't figure out what caused it.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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