ubiquity incorrectly detects bitlocker as enabled

[Brian Murray]

I followed the instructions to check and see if bitlocker was enabled and it is in fact not enabled yet I still cannot install Ubuntu alongside Windows 10.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 21.10
Package: ubiquity 21.10.10
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.13.0-19.19-generic 5.13.14
Uname: Linux 5.13.0-19-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu70
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CasperVersion: 1.465
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Jan 4 20:35:02 2022
InstallCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed maybe-ubiquity quiet splash ---
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" - Release amd64 (20211012)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This should be the first sector of the "bitlocker" partition.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Here is the lsblk output of the same partition.

[Dan Bungert (dbungert)]

the sector you posted has the same magic bytes as one with bitlocker in place (and not the NTFS magic bytes), so I can understand why lsblk would flag it as bitlocker.

However I notice in my win10 vm that bitlocker has 3 states - On, Suspended, Off, and the On and Suspended states have the same magic bytes.

Would you boot the Windows side and report what state Windows thinks the partition is in? I wonder if it's actually in a suspended state.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I also tested this with a daily build of Ubuntu 22.04 and encountered the same situation with ubiquity.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The BitLocker status according to Windows.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I updated the following discourse post with information about the situation I encountered and the need to encrypt the partition and then unencrypt it.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-installation-on-computers-running-windows-and-bitlocker-turned-on/15338

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Brian, you nominated the bug to the current serie and there is a jira card reference, is anyone from foundation owning it at this point?

[Dan Bungert (dbungert)]

Short of greatly improved Linux BitLocker tools, I don't think we can do anything about this. lsblk is correctly detecting that a partition is BitLockered, so the installer logic is valid.

The screenshot Brian posted is helpful for understanding what's going on - to Windows the BitLocker partition is not actually encrypted, but it's still in BitLocker format and not something we can interact with in the way the installer needs.

I recommend closing the issue as invalid.