Always create the ESP

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli]

For a smoother transition for people who disabled and enabled secure boot later on, Steve mentioned to always create the ESP partition.

We can then install grub into the ESP.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Yes; this will furthermore require work in grub-installer, partman-auto, and partman-efi.

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

partman-auto recipes got adjusted so ESP is now created even under BIOS boot of ubiquity.

However, it simply is empty at the moment. We should "install" both PC & UEFI grub onto it, somehow.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Note: Currently on MBR systems the ESP is created with a type 'b' and EFI is type 'ef'

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

The second issue is that there is no partition type for partition 1 on the "Write changes to disk?" confirmation dialog in Ubiquity.

It's written:
"Partition #1 of Virtual Disk 1 (vda) as"

[Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)]

Had a stare at this.

partman-efi mostly disables itself if not booted under EFI (https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-efi/tree/init.d/efi?h=ubuntu/groovy#n15), I think that's why the partition type doesn't get set and why the partition doesn't get formatted. I'm not sure what the consequence of simply not checking that would be.

Also, I think grub-installer needs to grow a way to override archdetect (maybe just ARCH="${ARCH:-$(archdetect)}" or whatever) and ubiquity needs to call it twice.

IOW this is a fair bit of work.

[Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)]

Actually maybe this isn't too bad, here's three MPs that might be enough:

https://code.launchpad.net/~mwhudson/ubiquity/+git/ubiquity/+merge/384069
https://code.launchpad.net/~mwhudson/ubuntu/+source/partman-efi/+git/partman-efi/+merge/384067
https://code.launchpad.net/~mwhudson/ubuntu/+source/grub-installer/+git/grub-installer/+merge/384068

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

Hm, the grub-installer patch will not do the right thing. Because we need to install pc stuff on the bios bootdev, and unless the package grub_package is set to grub-pc this will not happen.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package partman-efi - 84ubuntu1

---------------
partman-efi (84ubuntu1) groovy; urgency=low

  * Merge from Debian unstable. Remaining changes:
    - check.d/efi: Make sure we block on a missing EFI partition no matter what
      architecture, not just for ia64. One could attempt to install on EFI x86
      and will need an ESP to be able to install GRUB. (LP: #1803031)
    - debian/partman-efi.templates: Make the no_efi template clearer, so that it
      clearly explains why an EFI System partition is important.
    - Clean-up leftover checks for the no longer used ignore_uefi file.
    - Save the number of ESPs found to /var/lib/partman/efi_esp_count for
      partman-auto. (LP: #1766945)
    - Do not ask the user about forcing UEFI installation if there are BIOS
      compatibility mode installed systems as those will still be bootable from
      grub if we proceed in UEFI mode. (LP: #1668148)
    - debian/partman-efi.templates: remove the partman-efi/non_efi_system
      template as we no longer need it.
    - Remove efi-modules dependency; it seems to be built into Ubuntu
      kernels now.
    - Require partman-base >= 129 to support a null value for the name.
    - Only force an EFI system partition on ia64.
    - Allow x86/macs booted in legacy mode to use EFI System partitions.

  * Always init EFI mode, irrespective if booted in EFI or legacy
    mode. LP: #1847721

partman-efi (84) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload

  [ Updated translations ]
  * Estonian (et.po) by Kristjan Räts
  * Korean (ko.po) by Changwoo Ryu
  * Portuguese (Brazil) (pt_BR.po) by Adriano Rafael Gomes
  * Tamil (ta.po) by Jeyanthinath MuthuRam

partman-efi (83) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload

  [ Updated translations ]
  * Russian (ru.po) by Lev Lamberov

partman-efi (82) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload

  [ Updated translations ]
  * Czech (cs.po) by Miroslav Kure
  * Esperanto (eo.po) by Felipe Castro
  * Croatian (hr.po) by Milo Ivir
  * Indonesian (id.po) by Andika Triwidada
  * Icelandic (is.po) by Sveinn í Felli
  * Swedish (sv.po) by Anders Jonsson
  * Simplified Chinese (zh_CN.po) by 玉堂白鹤

partman-efi (81) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload

  [ Cyril Brulebois ]
  * Remove Christian Perrier from Uploaders, with many thanks for all
    his contributions over the years! (Closes: #927572)

  [ Holger Wansing ]
  * Remove trailing whitespaces from changelog file, to fix lintian tag.
  * Adapt sublevel definitions for template strings; also mark an ia64-only
    string as not-translatable (no need for translators to work on this
    dropped arch).
    Includes udating all po|pot files.

  [ Updated translations ]
  * German (de.po) by Holger Wansing
  * French (fr.po) by Baptiste Jammet
  * Hebrew (he.po) by Yaron Shahrabani
  * Indonesian (id.po) by Andika Triwidada
  * Icelandic (is.po) by Sveinn í Felli
  * Dutch (nl.po) by Frans Spiesschaert
  * Punjabi (Gurmukhi) (pa.po) by Aman ALam
  * Portuguese (pt.po) by Miguel Figueiredo
  * Serbian (sr.po) by Filipovic Dragan

partman-efi (80) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload

  [ Cyril Brulebois ]
  * Update Vcs-{Browser,Git} to point to ...

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

This is now fixed in today's daily. The partition is formatted "as ESP".