Installer should warn if previous installation of Ubuntu exists

[Eugene]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

If user boots from LiveCD and starts installation in order to upgrade his Ubuntu this way (from 7.04 to 7.10, for example) it will be a good idea if installer autodetects previous installation and warns user that upgrade is not done this way, but done using update-manager.

[Eugene (varnav)]

This entry will be more correct as a blueprint.
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/existing-installation-notice

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I don't think this needs a blueprint.

[W. Prins (wprins)]

For systems with a seperate home partition, it would be good if one of the options presented initially would be something like "Re-install/upgrade system, keeping existing home folder/user data", which if chosen, should then automatically use the same partition mounting/mappings as the previous installation did. Some care/warnings would have to be presented depending on whether the user has a seperate home partition (and if not advised that they will LOSE all data if they proceed with a single partition reinstalltion, together with the advice that an "upgrade" may be performed from the operating system itself, not the LiveCD.) Additionally, the "manual partitioner" should ideally always default to picking the correct mount points for a pre-existing system, and not mount the old root, boot, home etc under "media."

The reason I'm suggesting these changes is that I've been reinstalling fairly regularly lately testing various things, and so have a seperate home partition to prevent it from being blown away on reinstall. The only annoying thing here was that due to the "manual" installer choosing mount points under /media by default, I have to manually go and edit them to point to the right places again every time.

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

This bug was nominated for Gutsy but does currently not qualify for a 7.10 stable release update (SRU) and the nomination is therefore declined.
According the the SRU policy, the fix should already be deployed and tested in the current development version before an update to the stable releases will be considered. With 7.10 now released, that policy applies to this bug. See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates .
The bug is not being closed as work will continue on fixing it for the next release, Hardy Heron (8.04). If the state of this bug should change such that it qualifies for the SRU process, please contact the person who originally declined it and ask them to re-evaluate it. To help improve the state of this bug see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage .

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

This has been fixed: the installer now gives an option to upgrade the existing install.