The Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy live CD installer ignores the dontuse option
when it assigns swap partitions in manual mode.
I installed from the Live CD, chose manual mode, left the existing file
system intact, and did not assign a swap partition, since I planned on using
a swap file instead. The installer confirmed that no partition table changes
were about to happen, and no file systems would be formatted,
but assigned the swap partition anyway.
I lost my LUKS encrypted partition sdb1 when installing to sda2: the installer chose
the first partition on my second hard disk for 120 GB swap space!
I reproduced the bug and took special care to make sure that the partition type on sdb1
was 83 (Linux) and checked with fdisk before the install. The effect was the same.
It looks like the sdb1 partition had been used as swap space during the install:
hexdump -C showed the string SWAPSPACE2 and various shell script contents near the
begin of the partition, and fdisk reported type 82 (linux swap).
After reboot into the newly installed system there was no swap partition in use.
This behavior is unexpected and confusing, and, of course, potentially disastrous.
The gzip-ed installer log file /var/log/installer/partman is attached.
Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https:/