Ubiquity Bug: forces Uefi options. I need MBR not GPT.

[Bruce Arnold]

Unless I use F10 and Select, I get “no bootable disk” message from my BIOS. I’ve installed separate disks with other Op systems … no problems. (Ubuntu 20.04, Mint 20.1, Zorin 16, Fedora 35, etc). It seems UB install forces Uefi options. Not good. I need Bios mode or legacy mode. I have disabled Uefi in my bios.
The UB makes my disk install type GPF.

Unless I use F10 and select an option, I get a no bootable disk message from my BIOS. If I press F10, when the screen says, "Please select boot device", I can select the hard drive and the Ubuntu boot screen proceeds normally.

Only 21.10, Budgie 21.10, and unsupported 22.04 show this problem. I’ve installed separate disks with other operating systems without any problems. Ubuntu 20.04, Mint 20.1, Zorin 16, and Fedora 35, all work fine. I have disabled UEFI in my BIOS and I have also tried the "Something Else" option during installation. I've followed the Ubuntu Handbook for installation.

My hard drive has only 2 partitions: "sda1 core.img and sda2 ext4 /". How can I boot Ubuntu without having to use F10 and select the appropriate drive?

Using gdisk, I found that the disk was still in GPT mode in spite of my changes. I then started over and using gparted created the following MBR disk table:
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
   1 2048 34815 16.0 MiB 0700 Microsoft basic data
   2 34816 62543871 29.8 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
   3 62543872 96098303 16.0 GiB 8200 Linux swap
   4 96098304 625141759 252.3 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem

I then did a fresh install of Budgie 21.10 and chose “something else”. I had to bypass 5 error messages trying to convince me that EFI was missing. (I knew that!) The install went normally and the computer boots and works perfectly. Note: there is an option in gdisk to convert GPT to MBR but I couldn’t make it work.
I also left the problem on the AskUbuntu site but have not gotten any replies.

I next tried it on Ubuntu 21.10. Works fine. This MSDOS table can be much simpler: A 16MB boot partition and the rest an EXT4 root partition.

[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/1960141/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I disagree with this being treated as a question. The user has clearly stated that, when ubiquity sets up the target disk, his BIOS is unable to boot it without special intervention in the BIOS options at boot. This is a valid bug report.

Bruce, can you please give more details about the system where you're encountering this issue? The expectation is that, when ubiquity has finished setting up the disk, it is bootable under both BIOS *and* UEFI. This is desirable precisely because of the existence of systems that can be togglable between BIOS and UEFI mode, as well as to support the possible migration of disks from one system to another with different firmware. So the fact that it is not bootable for you, is specific to your BIOS implementation and we would need more information to try to figure out why it is not compatible. In general, the use of GPT instead of DOS partition tables should not make a disk unbootable under BIOS.

[Bruce Arnold (mrspock)]

I went through a fresh install. Here are the details:

Using a new image of Ubuntu 21.10.
Download ISO. Verify using checksum. Use "USB Image writer" on virgin 32GB Stick. gdisk shows stick has 3 partitions: Basic, EFI, and Basic. MBR is protective, GPT is present.
Format 120GB SSD to Fat32. Box BIOS is set to "NO EFI". Installation proceeded using all defaults. Reboot.
Boot message "Boot Failure". Go to F10 screen and select hard drive: Normal Startup.
Replace disk with a Ubuntu 20.04.2 hard drive: System boots normally without any failure message.

Data 1:
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.8

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 234441648 sectors, 111.8 GiB
Model: ADATA SU655
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 2AA7FA81-FDCB-4C2D-BF94-267833FC182A
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 234441614
Partitions will be aligned on 2-sector boundaries
Total free space is 16 sectors (8.0 KiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
   1 34 1987 977.0 KiB EF02
   2 1988 1052769 513.1 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition
   3 1052770 234441598 111.3 GiB 8300

DATA 2
{
  "Version": "21.10",
  "BIOS": {
    "Vendor": "Intel Corp.",
    "Version": "TYG4110H.86A.0036.2009.1126.2047"
  },
  "CPU": {
    "OpMode": "32-bit, 64-bit",
    "CPUs": "4",
    "Threads": "1",
    "Cores": "4",
    "Sockets": "1",
    "Vendor": "GenuineIntel",
    "Family": "6",
    "Model": "23",
    "Stepping": "10",
    "Name": "Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9400 @ 2.66GHz",
    "Virtualization": "VT-x"
  },
  "Arch": "amd64",
  "HwCap": "-",
  "GPU": [
    {
      "Vendor": "8086",
      "Model": "2e32"
    }
  ],
  "RAM": 8.1,
  "Disks": [
    120
  ],
  "Partitions": [
    114.3,
    0.5
  ],
  "Screens": [
    {
      "Size": "530mmx290mm",
      "Resolution": "1920x1080",
      "Frequency": "59.96"
    },
    {
      "Size": "410mmx230mm",
      "Resolution": "1366x768",
      "Frequency": "59.62"
    }
  ],
  "Autologin": true,
  "LivePatch": false,
  "Session": {
    "DE": "ubuntu:GNOME",
    "Name": "ubuntu",
    "Type": "wayland"
  },
  "Language": "en_US",
  "Timezone": "America/New_York",
  "Install": {
    "Media": "Ubuntu 21.10 \"Impish Indri\" - Release amd64 (20211012)",
    "Type": "GTK",
    "OEM": false,
    "PartitionMethod": "use_device",
    "DownloadUpdates": true,
    "Language": "en",
    "Minimal": false,
    "RestrictedAddons": false,
    "Stages": {
      "0": "language",
      "1": "language",
      "566": "console_setup",
      "590": "prepare",
      "607": "partman",
      "631": "start_install",
      "749": "timezone",
      "770": "usersetup",
      "1053": "user_done",
      "1574": "done"
    }
  }
}

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]