"Can't have a partition outside the disk!" error when two partitions are flagged as $primary in a partman-auto/expert_recipe

[Etienne Goyer]

Binary package hint: partman-auto

When preseeding partman-auto/expert_recipe where two partitions are flagged as $primary, the text mode installer give out an error "Can't have a partition outside the disk!", followed by " Failed to partition the selected disk - This probably happened because there are too many (primary) partitions in the partition table."

The following preseed was used to trigger the problem:

d-i partman-auto/method string regular
d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string \
        test-primary :: \
        2048 100000000 100000000 ext3 $primary{ } \
                $bootable{ } method{ format } format{ } \
                use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 } \
                mountpoint{ / } . \
        512 512 300% linux-swap $primary{ } \
                method{ swap } format{ } .
d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true

If you remove the $primary{ } flag from the second partition, the installer proceed as usual.

This problem was founded and tested on Ubuntu 8.04.2.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Thanks for your report. This is also bug 287571.