Installation impossible when partition mounted on HD

[StefanHuszics]

Binary package hint: live-installer

When having only access to a laptop and internet it becomes impossible to install Ubuntu to a separate partition, for no valid reason. The installer complains and halts/loops at 15% due to a partition being mounted on the HD claiming it thus cant continue because "it has to do changes on the HD" even when no such change is needed.

According to live-installer itself after manual partition setup it claims it wont need to alter structure.
I have even tried to prevent it from installing grub (clicking [Advanced] button and deselecting grub installation to HD), but it still fails.

Usage case:

Available - Laptop with windows, 1 internal HD, Internet
Not available - CD-ROM drive, No large enough USB memory

Steps to reproduce:

1) From Windows Install (a temporary) Ubuntu via WUBI
2) Start temp Ubuntu located on windows
3) Install gparted and make room on HD for a proper Ubuntu install (eg making 5GiB hd5 and 100GiB hd6 with ext3)
4) Download and place eg ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso on /dev/sda5
5) Add live-cd image to grub2 menu (sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom)

menuentry "Ubuntu Desktop LiveCD (i386)" {
 set root=(hd0,5)
 loopback loop /isos/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso
 linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/isos/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso --
 initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

6) sudo update-grub
7) Reboot and start live cd from HD
8) Start installation procedure
9) At HD setup choose manual and specify hd6 to be / with no formating
10) Deselect any preselected swapspace (to avoid formating)
11) See Ubuntu verify no changes to HD needed
12) Additionally deselect installation of Grub to HD in any form

13) Watch in frustration as installation fails and return to HD setup when reaching 15% due to "cant make needed changes to sda" since you have a loopback mounted on sda5 even though clearly no changes need to be made to neither MBR or sda5 (or any other partition for that matter).

BTW There is a popup box that comes up with 2 alternatives with the fail message, both of which do nothing except take you back to HD setup... If the alternatives perform the same thing, just add 1 [OK] button, not 2 different. Not good UI to create the perception of choise when no choise exists.

[allxk (allxk)]

Installing Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit This is a bug?
Please see attached image:
The disk partitioned with gparted.
Ubuntu 10.10 x64 Installation window will not show any partitions, and edit partition option.
Same thing with Ubuntu 10.10 x32.

[Bougron (francis-bougron)]

So in version 16.04 is is the same thing.......
When i want to wirite some thing in the partition /dev/sda1 witch is mounted on /cdrom
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount|grep sda1
/dev/sda1 on /cdrom type vfat (ro,noatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

witch it contains
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /cdrom
boot ldlinux.c32 preseed SmartClean.ini
casper ldlinux.sys README.diskdefines syslinux
dists md5sum.txt $RECYCLE.BIN System Volume Information
EFI pics Remove_LiLi.bat
install pool

i can't dismount the partition and remount to write /EFI/ubuntu on this partition.
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo umount /cdrom
umount: /cdrom: target is busy
        (In some cases useful info about processes that
         use the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1).)
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lsof +D /cdrom
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfsd-fuse file system /run/user/999/gvfs
      Output information may be incomplete.
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fuse /cdrom
sudo: fuse: command not found
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fuser /cdrom
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fuser -v /cdrom
                     USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/cdrom: root kernel mount /cdrom
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo umount -lv /cdrom
umount: /cdrom (/dev/sda1) unmounted
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo ls /cdrom
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /mnt/A
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -v /dev/sda1 /mnt/A
mount: /dev/sda1 is already mounted or /mnt/A busy
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Bougron (francis-bougron)]

See the message here http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=449892Screenshotfrom20160521124220.png

I want to assign The repertory /EFI/ubuntu on the same partition that /EFI/BOOT without use windows10 to do this.
and after copy /EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.OF on /EFI/boot/bootx64/efi... etc....