ubiquity crashed with InstallStepError in configure_bootloader()

[Alkis Georgopoulos]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

There are some duplicates of this bug, but I open a new one to send the auto-collected data (I hope it is attached automatically....).

Ubuntu intrepid beta.
Partitions: (fdisk => print)
   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5337 42868736+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 5338 9253 31455270 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 9254 13169 31453474+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 13169 30401 138417835+ 83 Linux

I manually specified sda3 = to be formated as ext3 and mounted as /
and sda4 = mounted as /home

sda2 contains the old Ubuntu hardy + the "old" /boot (I didn't specify a /boot partition at installer).

I'm just after the installer crash - the cd files are supposedly copied to /dev/sda3:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ mount
/proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
tmpfs on /lib/modules/2.6.27-4-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /lib/modules/2.6.27-4-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
/dev/scd0 on /cdrom type iso9660 (ro,noatime)
/dev/loop0 on /rofs type squashfs (ro,noatime)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/ubuntu/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=ubuntu)
/dev/sda3 on /target type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro) <====
/dev/sda4 on /target/home type ext3 (rw,relatime)
/proc on /target/proc type none (rw,bind)
/dev on /target/dev type none (rw,bind)

and
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /target
bin cdrom etc initrd.img lost+found mnt proc sbin sys usr vmlinuz
boot dev home lib media opt root srv tmp var

so I don't know why fdisk still reports it as NTFS. I'll look more into it after rebooting.

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.5
Package: ubiquity 1.10.3
ProcAttrCurrent: unconfined
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity gtk_ui
ProcEnviron: Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/proc/8328/environ'
PythonArgs: ['/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity', 'gtk_ui']
SourcePackage: ubiquity
Title: ubiquity crashed with InstallStepError in configure_bootloader()
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-4-generic i686
UserGroups:

[Alkis Georgopoulos (alkisg)]

...and here's a screenshot I got right after rebooting (again with the live CD), where gparted shows the partition /dev/sda3 as ext3,
where fdisk -l lists it as NTFS,
and also grub lists it as NTFS.

So maybe this is a gparted bug? :-)
I.e. it may have problems reformatting an NTFS partition as ext3 (it didn't have such a problem when I installed hardy...)

I'm now going to manually remove /dev/sda3 completely, recreate it & format it as ext3.

[Alkis Georgopoulos (alkisg)]

After completely removing the partition and recreating it (ext3) with gparted, the installer worked fine. So I guess the installer has trouble formatting NTFS partitions as ext3.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This is the same problem documented in bug 149832. (I could have sworn that there was a more detailed description somewhere else but for the life of me I can't find it. If I do, I'll adjust duplications as necessary.)