[Bug 1668148] Re: Booting installer in EFI mode with existing bios mode hd crashes

[Graham Mitchell]

I spent days trying unsuccessfully to do a clean install of 18.04 onto a
system with an existing version of Linux. Each time the installer would
appear to be working properly, only to bomb out with an error after half
an hour.

Eventually I gave up, REFORMATTED MY HARD DRIVE and was able to get the
install to complete.

It makes me really frustrated to learn that the installer used to detect
my exact situation and warn about it and now just blindly goes down a
path that cannot succeed.

I agree 100% that it's a bad idea to present users with a choice that
they have no hope of making correctly.

But I also agree 100% with Phillip that if the installer can detect that
it has been booted in EFI mode and that it's trying to install onto a
hard drive with an existing BIOS mode install... just proceeding with
the EFI install is the wrong thing to do.

See https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1770966 for the literally hundreds
of people that were caused pain by this change.

I've been using Linux since the mid 1990s and using Ubuntu since 2006.

This upgrade from 17.10 to 18.04 was really unpleasant. It's among the
worst Ubuntu upgrade experiences I've ever had... and the only one in
which I've lost data. For an LTS release, that's simply not acceptable.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1668148

Title:
  Booting installer in EFI mode with existing bios mode hd crashes

Status in partman-efi package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in partman-efi source package in Artful:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  When installing in EFI mode to a disk that is partitioned without an
  EFI system partition, you do get a warning message that this may cause
  a problem and suggests that you go back and do a bios mode install
  instead.  The way that it is worded, and the fact that the button to
  switch to a BIOS mode install is labeled "cancel", is very confusing
  and has lead to hundreds, if not thousands of users clicking the OK
  button instead, and proceeding with an install that is doomed to fail.
  This message really needs to be clarified.

  Instead of clarifying, the question was removed, and grub-efi is
  always used, which crashes the install.  grub-pc is the correct
  version to use in this case.  This is a release regression that needs
  corrected for 18.04.1.

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