[Bug 1915152] Re: Installation of Ubuntu Unity 20.10 always fails if there is no EFI partition

[Liam Proven]

Confirmed and reproduced in Xubuntu 20.10 as well. This issue is _not_
confined to Ubuntu Unity and is also present in an official remix.

Steps taken to try to resolve it:
* updated system BIOS (machine is a Lenovo Thinkpad W500; was on 3.18, now on 3.23, latest) -> no change
• tried 2 different flavours of 20.10 -> no change
• placed a bootable DOS primary partition (C:), set active, tested OK; no change. 
• installed Windows 7 Enterprise SP1. No UEFI detected, no EFI partition created, no separate system partition needed or used.

Ubuntu Unity 20.04 went on this machine without a glitch. openSUSE Leap
15.2 was also fine.

The machine does not have UEFI, as far as I can tell. There is no option
to boot in legacy or UEFI mode.

The only way I have discovered to install 20.10 was to tell it my DOS
partition was the EFI System Partition. This worked fine, installed GRUB
into /dev/sda and now it boots.

However this has rendered my DOS partition unbootable, and now it is
mounted at /boot/efi which is not what I want.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1915152

Title:
  Installation of Ubuntu Unity 20.10 always fails if there is no EFI
  partition

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Even on BIOS systems with no UEFI

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
  Package: ubiquity 20.10.13
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.8.0-25.26-generic 5.8.14
  Uname: Linux 5.8.0-25-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu50
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckMismatches: ./pool/main/b/binutils/binutils-common_2.35.1-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb
  CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
  CasperVersion: 1.455
  Date: Tue Feb  9 15:38:57 2021
  InstallCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed maybe-ubiquity ignore_uuid quiet splash ---
  LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu Unity 20.10
  RebootRequiredPkgs:
   linux-image-5.8.0-25-generic
   linux-base
  SourcePackage: ubiquity
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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