Ubuntu Installation Failure With Formatted Disk

[Timothy Quinn]

Ubuntu Installer fails when trying to install on a Drive that is previously formatted by Ubuntu installer.

I know this issue has been around for a long time but is there a way that the installer can detect a formatted drive automatically and if the usecase is to wipe the drive anyway, automatically format the drive before running any code that may fail due to the existing drive formatting?

I can imagine this issue can be a real roadblock for newbies as when it fails as there are virtually no hints of why it is failing.

Background:
Today, I was installing Ubuntu 20.04 on an new computer I used a DVD I burned back in May of this year. The installer failed and it appears to have already formatted the drive at that point.

I had assumed that the DVD may have been damaged so I downloaded 20.04.1 and burned a new DVD. When I installed, it failed again before I got to the final "install" button. I did let the system send the bug report up to the server at the time (about 13:00 EST). I have seen this issue before and it was related to the drive formatting causing the installer to bail so I used Ubuntu Live and gparted to delete any data on the drive. When I re-installed, it installed successfully.

During all the above installations, I used the `Wipe drive and use ZFS` option.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1908435/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Timothy Quinn (tim-c-quinn)]

Update, my last 'successful' install failed because it looks like gparted did not completely nuke the drive and the installation did not boot up after it completed. At boot, I got the Busybox screen with no clear errors. When I pulled up the drive in Ubuntu live cd, the partitions were very odd sda1, sda2, sda5, sda6, sda7 and no sda3, or sda4. I used 'disks' utility to wipe all partitions and used `df` to verify that there were no partitions left on the disk and am now trying 20.04.1 install again...

This is another failure mode of Ubuntu installer not really wiping the drive before before starting install; a 'successful' installation that does not boot.

[Timothy Quinn (tim-c-quinn)]

I was able to get ubuntu installed successfully using ZFS by doing an offline minimal installation both `Download Updates` and `Third Party Software` disabled. The installation was successful and Ubuntu booted ok. I have now switched my production desktop over to the new installation.

I suspect the majority of the failures were due to `Third Party Software` option (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-cdimage/+bug/1871268).

As its possible that I got a false positive on the bug, I suggest that you close this ticket until I get time to do some playing around to see if drive formatting is actually an issue with current builds of ubiquity.