Frugal Install fails with Ubuntu Releases 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, 10.04, 10.10 & 11.04

[ponchojuan]

Unetbootin does not seem to work on Ubuntu 8.10 Live CD or the Jaunty Daily. The issue appears to be that the CDROM boot image and target install partitions can not be in the same device. Not sure you can do anything about this but inform the Ubuntu team since much of their installs are through Unetbootin. The install fails at the partitioner: It can't display the partitions since the drive is still mounted ( as /cdrom with the unetbootin instance). I have gone into a terminal console and forced a umount, and then the partitoner works, the install completes, but fails to properly install the kernel and sylink. Jaunty has a new error message informing that the drive is mounted but fails to tell the user anything else. It should expect an unetbootin frugal install situation.

Also, if you delete partitions, during the install, GRUB gets terribly confused about partition addresses and fails at Stage 1.5 Error 22. Since this situation effects mainly folks installing without a CDROM, replacing the MSR to fix the problem, especially in Windows XP is a real pain ( the recovery disk is a CD). There should be some sort of warning NOT to modify the partition count while installing anything through Unetbootin. I'm still unsuccessful at installing Ubuntu ( any version) through unetbootin yet. I'll let you know if I can figure out the right work-around for the mount/umount issue.

[jeannich (jeannich)]

This bug happens for frugal install of Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10. Ubuntu 8.04 is not concerned.

To reproduce the bug, install UNetbootin on windows and chose "frugal install" of Ubuntu (either of the concerned versions 8.10 or 9.04 or 9.10)
. Reboot and launch an installation of ubuntu. At the beginning of the installation process, you get this error message:

"
Failed to unmount partitions

The installer needs to commit changes to partition tables, but cannot do so because partitions on the following could not be unmounted.
/cdrom
Please close any applications using these mount points.
Would you like the installer to try to unmount these partitions again?
"

This prevents to go further in the installation.

Workaround: There is no workaround known.
Be careful, some internet forums suggest to unmount manually this '/cdrom' before starting the installation (with the command "umount -l -r -f /cdrom") ; but this will not work and may break your grub settings. I tried this on Ubuntu 9.04 & Ubuntu 9.10. The result is that indeed you can complete the install process but grub won't be correctly configured (basically it does not recognize neither ubuntu nor your current windows partition) and after a reboot grub won't show any boot menu and will keep on starting memtest.
You will have to restore your MBR if you want to access your windows partition again. (To restore your MBR, you will need a CD-ROM drive and an installation CD of Windows XP or Vista _Win7 may allow that also_. Boot on your installation CD and type 'R' to choose "restore" option. Once there use the command FIXBOOT and/or FIXMBR.)

[johnraff (launchpad-rafflesnagoya)]

I have not experienced this problem when installing Ubuntu 8.10 or 9.04 with Unetbootin onto a Windows 98 system with the "netinstall" option and "hard disk" install. (No "frugal install" option appeared in the Unetbootin 377 window.)

I think Unetbootin needs to load the whole .iso file into memory before partitioning the hard disk. Does the problem occur when using a previously downloaded .iso file? Could it be because there was not enough RAM available for that file? The netinstall iso is very small, but a full system iso would be several hundred megabytes.

[Landreville (landreville)]

Has anyone found a workaround for this yet? I suppose I could install Ubuntu 8.04 and do a ridiculous amount of dist-upgrades (anything more than one is a ridiculous amount)

[Geza Kovacs (gezakovacs)]

Actually, this "bug" is really by design of the frugal install feature; it can't repartition the partition that it's mounted on (to do that the system need to be run entirely from ram, which the Ubuntu Live CD is too large for). The workaround is to do the repartitioning beforehand from Parted Magic or Slitaz before attempting to install Ubuntu. Alternatively, just use the Netinstall option for Ubuntu instead of the Live CD, that doesn't suffer from the same issue.

[StefanHuszics (stefan-huszics)]

> The workaround is to do the repartitioning beforehand from Parted Magic or Slitaz before attempting to install Ubuntu.

That is an incorrect statement. Even if you have partitioned everything beforehand, change absolutely nothing apart from setting root partition (not even formating it) one still get the same error message "changes needs to be made, but cant unmount /cdrom". I even tried unchecking the option for modifying mbr, it still fails.

Also, this bug persists in Unbuntu 10.04 installer (just tried). Anyway the bug here really is in the Ubuntu installer, but the more noise we create about it, the more likely it is someone bothers to fix it. (I myself posted it as a bug a while back (9.04/9.10) directly to ubuntu but sofar nothing improved).

Maybe I will try doing the netinstall or 8.04 and then upgrade.

[dino99 (9d9)]

confirm this problem too:

- previously formated a partition with disk-utility as ext4
- have used lucid unetbootin to prepare a usb stick: chosen hdmedia + lucid alternate i386
- tried to make installation on the previous formated partition: boot on the usbstick then choose expert install mode, the process start, ask for language then totally fails to recognize keyboard, dont find any hdd (3 on this system), and worst when it try to load driver, the stupid installer want to check floppy and cdrom (even if they are desabled into bios) and dont propose or ask to check usbstick, what a crap.

- then tried the "frugal" mode but still the same nightmare

[Hendy Irawan (ceefour)]

Still happens on Ubuntu 11.04. And it's even harder (if that's even possible) to apply the umount then re-mount workaround given that the installer runs in background.

[dino99 (9d9)]

This program is quite not used nowadays as "usb creator" or other tools are prefered. The latest update is from Oct 2014, so the problem can have been solved too.