Partitioner's choice is usb drive when installing from usb stick instead of /dev/sda (hard drive)

[stlubuntu]

I also experienced this bug while performing a desktop install using the 32-bit (and 64-bit separately) desktop 12.04.1 livecd installers. Both images (as they are all now isohybrid) were written to a usb stick (2GB) using dd. At the partitioning stage, it asked where to install the MBR and the default choice was /dev/sdb (which was the usb stick from which it was being installed.) /dev/sda was the sole hard drive installed (PATA drives.)

The expected behavior would be to default to /dev/sda or the first hard drive and not the usb stick from which it was being installed.

This appears to be a regression from Ubuntu 10.04 when it did not occur. If the user does not catch this, the fresh install is unbootable and drops to a grub> prompt when attempting to boot.

Description: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
Release: 12.04

ubiquity:
  Installed: 2.10.20
  Candidate: 2.10.20
  Version table:
 *** 2.10.20 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.10.16 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages

Thanks for your work on this project.

Kind Regards.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[vgeloven (vgeloven)]

Something similar happens with the current version. The installation medium is automatically designated as /dev/sda and the target as /dev/sdb However, installing MBR fails, because it can only write that to /dev/sda, while /dev/sdb is the actual target.

See also https://askubuntu.com/questions/459620/unable-to-install-grub-in-dev-sda-when-installing-grub and https://askubuntu.com/questions/408617/ubuntu-minimal-cd-installs-grub-to-usb-drive

The installar should, upon failure, proactively as the user where to install it, instead of retrying only on the dev that just failed.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

"The installar should, upon failure, proactively as the user where to install it, instead of retrying only on the dev that just failed."

It does just that. This also isn't related to this bug report. To work on the original issue we would need to see the system log files at the time. Given the age of this bug that is likely long gone. Feel free to reopen if you can still reproduce the issue and attach the files from /var/log.

[Pander (pander)]

Pleas set this to Won't Fix.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Why? If anything it actually has been fixed. Why did you add the tags for 15.10 etc?