Installer ask where to install boot loader during uefi installation

[Michiel]

During UEFI boot install of 14.04.2 (from ~2015-6-16) the installer asks for a location to install a boot loader. But according to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI it shouldn't. I'm sure i'm booting in uefi. I tried the uefi only image and normal way of creating the usb install drive.
I have legacy boot disabled and created a new uefi boot entry pointing to the boot.efi on the usb drive.
During boot i see the black screen giving me the choice what to do (install, try, check).
I already have Debian 8 installed in uefi mode (no problems) and thus have an ESP.
I can select the partition for / but cant set the mount point for the ESP. I don't want to risk installing grub to mbr by asking for a place fot the boot loader so i stop installing Ubuntu from that point.

It is a new mSata disk. On an other non ssd disk i have w8 and Ubuntu 14.04.2 installed, but when that disk is removed the situation is the same. Because of previous installations (on non ssd) there is an uefi entry (ubuntu) visible during boot.

How can i safely and certain install Ubuntu in UEFI mode without installing something/grub in MBR?

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Indeed, the installer should not be giving you a choice of where to install grub, since grub is always installed to the ESP. That is to say, no matter what you choose, when doing an EFI install, grub is always installed to whatever you mounted in /boot/efi.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Indeed, this would be an aesthetic issue more than anything else; whatever is picked would be ignored. I think this simply comes from the drive picker which is usually there for other install paths, and doesn't get hidden in the EFI case.

Adding bitesize tag, someone may be able to pick this up easily enough to implementing hiding that dialog (provided it's indeed the right thing to do).

[Michiel (fabermichiel)]

Note that i can't mount the EFI partition. The installer sees the partition as EFI but i can't assign a mount point to it. Is that the expected behaviour?

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Yes, an EFI system partition must be mounted in /boot/efi, so you can't change it.

[Ubfan (ubfan1)]

No need to ask where to put grub if there's only one disk, but don't forget, each disk may have an ESP, and if the installer's target is not sda, then the question not only needs to be asked, but the installer should use the provided input. It's another bug that this input is just ignored.

[GizmoChicken (gizmochicken)]

Ubfan wrote:

"don't forget, each disk may have an ESP, and if the installer's target is not sda, then the question not only needs to be asked, but the installer should use the provided input. It's another bug that this input is just ignored."

I agree. And a fix to a bug that I report elsewhere could simultaneously overcome this limitation. Please see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1855874 for a discussion of the advantages of being able to specify the ESP location (when more than one present), but also being able to specify an alternative to installing EFI files to /EFI/ubuntu, especially when dual booting two Ubuntu installations.