ubuntu installer modifies EFI configuration on wrong harddrive

[Sub-atomic-fusion]

During installation, users are asked to specify what harddrive they would like to install on, or in the advanced mode, what harddrive that would like to install the bootloader on. At least with EFI, this selection seems to be disregarded.

This has happened to me three different times. The first two times, I was installing Ubuntu onto an external harddrive, and after very carefully instructing it to install the bootloader onto the external harddrive, it mangled EFI setup of the internal harddrive both times (once each on machines with Mac and Ubuntu installed internally). The third time was today, where Windows was on one harddrive and I was installing Kubuntu on a blank harddrive that I had just added. I intended to use the new, Linux harddrive primarily, and I set my BIOS to boot from it, but I didn't see any reason to take the old one out of the computer. After installing, the system would not boot, and it was only when I tried to boot into Windows that I found that grub had been installed on the wrong harddrive.

I don't have an exact version of Ubiquity, but the Kubuntu 15.04 image that I downloaded today did this. To be clear, the first two times I was using Ubuntu (not Kubuntu) 15.05.

Description: Ubuntu 15.04
Release: 15.04

[Sub-atomic-fusion (sub-atomic-fusion)]

After physically disconnecting my old harddrive, the installer placed the bootloader on the correct harddrive.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[oldfred (oldfred)]

Grub only installs to sda.

I have created ESP on sdb, told installer to install to sdb, it says during install in notes at bottom installing grub to sdb, but it overwrites my default boot /EFI/ubuntu on sda's ESP.

Also issue with full install to flash drive or any external drive as sdb or higher letter. It installs grub to internal drive. If external it also needs to create /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi.

[Adamhm (adamhm)]

I can confirm this bug too, noticed with Mint 18.1 (link with more details: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=236741 ) but have also tested and confirmed with Ubuntu 16.04.

The bootloader seems to always get placed on the first EFI partition it finds. This can be very inconvenient, e.g. if you want to dual-boot with Windows on a separate disk and don't want to affect the disk Windows is installed on in any way.

This can be worked around by changing the ports the drives are connected to, or by disconnecting the other drive before installing (and then reconnecting the other drive & running "sudo update-grub" post-install), but this is far from ideal and not something I'd want to advise new/less experienced users to do.