Kubuntu installation into external disk ruins internal disk boot whilst leaving external disk unbootable
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
grub-installer (Ubuntu) |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
ubiquity (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
In order to test Kubuntu 14.04.3 LTS desktop hardware support on my laptop I attempted to install it (via USB stick) onto a USB external hard drive, with the plan of booting off the external drive and leaving my internal drive safely alone. I figured I could trust the installer to be sensible.
What a depressingly fatal mistake that was...
The internal drive is now screwed up, it drops to grub rescue if I attempt to boot off it. Manually attempting to use grub rescue seems problematic, because grub rescue doesn't like the licence on the internal drive's grub files.
The external drive can't be booted either, because grub wasn't properly installed on it.
This happened when asking it to do a non-manual install over the entire external drive - including formatting. If I had done a manual install I would have avoided this mess by explicitly asking it to install GRUB on the external drive. Or, if the installer had warned me what it was doing with GRUB, like it does with other file system operations, I might have been able to avoid this mess.
This is obviously a really nasty bug in the installer. If it's asked to install with all normal default actions over entire disk /dev/sdX, it doesn't make sense to do that - except then screw up grub on /dev/sdY.
The explicit process was:
Where would you like to install Kubuntu: Guided - use entire disk
Device: SCSI4 (0,0,0) sdc
<Install Now>
Warning:
The partition tables of the following devices are changed: SCSI4 (0,0,0) sdc
The following partitions are going to be formatted:
partition #1 of SCSI4 (0,0,0) sdc as ext4
partition #5 of SCSI4 (0,0,0) sdc as swap
NB: Conspicuously absent is any mention that the internal drive (sda) will
never boot again.
This is a repeated pass through the steps for the purposes of reporting the bug. However, I'm pretty sure the first time I did this it ALSO told me it'd format the swap partition on sda. For some reason that is not reported here. Although I wasn't happy it wanted to touch sda, at the same time it seemed relatively harmless, so I let it slide. I mention it just in case it's relevant, though I guess the most likely bug is just poor decision making on where grub is installed.
tags: | added: kubuntu |
tags: | added: installer |
tags: | added: boot device grub unbootable |
tags: | added: corruption |
description: | updated |
description: | updated |
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