Partitioner insists on formatting swap unnecessarily

[Jack Wasey]

To reproduce:
Attempt to install dapper on pre-partitioned drive with at least one swap partition.
At partitioning, go to "manuall configure partitions", then try to configure RAID.
The partitioner will ask whether it can format swap partitions before proceeding.
This is not necessary, and furthermore it is disconcerting to inexperienced users, and experienced ones who have seen many a trashed drive/partition.

[Andy Kniss (akniss)]

I had a similar issue with the graphical installer, not sure if it is related. I attempted to use the "manually configure partitions" from the liveCD Dapper install (RC1). I removed two logical partitions (one 1004 MB swap and one 23 Gig /), then tried to create an 8 Gig /, 1200 MB swap, and the rest /home. The installer would try to keep a 1004 MB swap partition size, make the 8 Gig partition swap space also, and would put / and on the 15 Gig partition. I tried re-partitioning with the graphical installer a couple times but would have the same issue everytime. I then booted using a gparted liveCD to format the partitions, and then the dapper liveCD installer worked fine using those partitions.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Andy, this is a different bug. Please file it against the 'ubiquity' package, and after filing it please use the "Add Attachment" link to attach /var/log/installer/syslog and /var/log/installer/partman.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

(Although I suppose those log files will be useless since you rebooted before filing the bug. Drat. Probably not much I can do then.)

[Andy Kniss (akniss)]

I will probably try dapper on another system in the next couple days. I
will try to do a similar partition setup to see if I can recreate the
problem and submit things correctly. Sorry for the confusion... I've
not done this before.

Colin Watson wrote:
> (Although I suppose those log files will be useless since you rebooted
> before filing the bug. Drat. Probably not much I can do then.)
>
>

[Jack Wasey (jackwasey)]

This bug is is still alive and well with Gutsy Tribe 4. I was using the alternate install CD.

[Gabriel Ruiz (anakron)]

Thanks for report it!. This is not a Critical bug, but it an unnecessary thing.

[Jack Wasey (jackwasey)]

Still true for hardy and intrepid.

N.b. the UUID of the swap partitions is changed by the installer, so if you are installing multiple versions of ubuntu on one machine, even if you do not use recognised swap in the new install, the swap will not be mounted by the original installation. This is because the UUID is used in fstab. A very useful alternative behaviour would be for intrepid to automount any swap it finds (perhaps unless it contains a hibernated image).

[Jack Wasey (jackwasey)]

surely this bug is simple to fix? just do not reformat swap!
i'm assuming this happens because swap is autodetected and assigned to be used. any assignments to the partition table, normally allocating partitions to paths, result in a format being necessary AT THE END. why swap needs to be reformated before configuring LVM is a mystery to me.

this is not critical, but NB it will cause other installations to fail to mount their swap because the UUID is changed on a mkswap.