Ubiquity installer crashes with manual partition layout - looks like a regression

[Juergen Scholz]

If one manually creates a partition layout (btrfs on dm-crypt) and starts the ubiquity installer, one is able to select all partitons and set everything up as desired. Upon starting the actual installation (when filesystems get set up/created/mounted) ubiquity crashes It displays the timezone dialog briefly before that.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: ubiquity 2.21.3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.18.0-8.9-generic 3.18.1
Uname: Linux 3.18.0-8-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.15.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.347
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Mon Jan 12 19:56:26 2015
InstallCmdLine: file=/cdrom/preseed/kubuntu.seed boot=casper maybe-ubiquity initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- debian-installer/language=de keyboard-configuration/layoutcode?=de
LiveMediaBuild: Kubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Alpha amd64 (20150112)
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Juergen Scholz (juergen.scholz)]

Please excuse, that I did not got to a workaround before reporting this bug.

It is indeed possible to have a custom partition layout with the ubiquity installer on the KDE Live CD, when the layout is created manually. If the deisred root ("/") filesystem is btrfs it needs to be completely fresh or created by the installer.

The reason for the issue seems to be that I had a custom subvolume ("sv_root") and that I set that subvolume as the default subvolume to mount. Whereas the installer wants to use a subvolume named "@" as the system's root. There seems to be no way to deviate from this during installation.

I perfectly understand that names are a question of taste. Yet there is no reason to not support custom subvolume names.

To get a working system:
  * Do not select updates/extras
  * Open manually created LVM/dm-crypt volumes
  * Select your volumes - choose to format your /boot-device and the device containing /
  * Install
  * The installer crashes when it needs to install the bootloader (at least it looks that way)
  * Quit the installer
  * Mount the target into /target with dev, dev/pts, proc, sys, boot; this needs to match the planned layout, which will be put in fstab and crypttab, *EXACTLY*
  * Add /etc/crypttab to reflect the crypted devices correctly
  * Edit /etc/fstab to reflect the system correctly
  * Create /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/cryptroot file; this is the step I missed at first
  * update-initramfs -u -k all
  * update-grub
  * Unmount everything
  * reboot

Thank you for taking the time to read this report. Please forgive my grammar, since I am not a native speaker.

[Simon Quigley (tsimonq2)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. If you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:
apport-collect 1409865

and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]