[Bug 1507448] [NEW] Kubuntu installation into external disk ruins internal disk boot whilst leaving external disk unbootable

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In order to test Kubuntu 14.04.3 LTS desktop hardware support on my
laptop I attempted to install it (via USB stick) onto a USB external
hard drive, with the plan of booting off the external drive and leaving
my internal drive safely alone.  I figured I could trust the installer
to be sensible.

What a depressingly fatal mistake that was...

The internal drive is now screwed up, it drops to grub rescue if I
attempt to boot off it.  Manually attempting to use grub rescue seems
problematic, because grub rescue doesn't like the licence on the
internal drive's grub files.

The external drive can't be booted either, because grub wasn't properly
installed on it.

This happened when asking it to do a non-manual install over the entire
external drive - including formatting.  If I had done a manual install I
would have avoided this mess by explicitly asking it to install GRUB on
the external drive.  Or, if the installer had warned me what it was
doing with GRUB, like it does with other file system operations, I might
have been able to avoid this mess.

This is obviously a really nasty bug in the installer.  If it's asked to
install with all normal default actions over entire disk /dev/sdX, it
doesn't make sense to do that - except then screw up grub on /dev/sdY.

The explicit process was:

    Where would you like to install Kubuntu: Guided - use entire disk
    Device: SCSI4 (0,0,0) sdc
    <Install Now>

Warning:

    The partition tables of the following devices are changed: SCSI4
(0,0,0) sdc

    The following partitions are going to be formatted:
    partition #1 of SCSI4 (0,0,0) sdc as ext4
    partition #5 of SCSI4 (0,0,0) sdc as swap

NB: Conspicuously absent is any mention that the internal drive (sda) will
never boot again.

This is a repeated pass through the steps for the purposes of reporting
the bug.  However, I'm pretty sure the first time I did this it ALSO
told me it'd format the swap partition on sda.  For some reason that is
not reported here.  Although I wasn't happy it wanted to touch sda, at
the same time it seemed relatively harmless, so I let it slide.  I
mention it just in case it's relevant, though I guess the most likely
bug is just poor decision making on where grub is installed.

** Affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: boot bot-comment corruption device grub installer kubuntu unbootable
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Kubuntu installation into external disk ruins internal disk boot whilst leaving external disk unbootable
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1507448
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