[Bug 2008948] Re: Ubiquity does not raise an informative error when device for bootloader has MBR (should be GPT)

[Chris Guiver]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command only once, as it
will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

apport-collect 2008948

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-
bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this
functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

No specifics as to ubiquity version, what release, what ISO you were
using were provided as I see it, if you use apport tools to file the bug
report these are automatically provided.  Please boot your installation
media & run `apport-collect` from there, OR you could try your installed
system (the installed system won't have `ubiquity` installed which maybe
a problem (for apport-collect), but it will have ubiquity's log).  If
the log is required it maybe requested & you can upload then.

(You do realize `ubiquity` is on ~life-support; 23.04 is expected to
have ISOs available with the replacement installer and an alternate ISO
with `ubiquity`, so if due to problems with the desktop-installer their
is the alternate with ubiquity installer.  This may change with beta
about to hit & hopefully we'll get loads of testing)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2008948

Title:
  Ubiquity does not raise an informative error when device for
  bootloader has MBR (should be GPT)

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Thanks for a good installation experience :) I have one unfortunate
  experience that took me many many hours to work through.

  Ubiquity should raise an error when a device chosen for the bootloader
  has an unsupported MBR table and not GPT. AFAICT, Ubuntu's grub
  installation only supports EFI so that requires GPT.

  Error suggestion: "Invalid partition table detected. Cannot complete
  installation. Please install bootloader on another device or choose
  New Partition Table (warning: All data will be lost)."

  User experience is this: I chose "Something else" to do manual
  partitioning. I tried many different options for partitioning and
  restarted the installation many times. They all lead to a grub
  installation error at the final step after copying all files. As a
  user, I'd persistently try to make the existing partitions work to
  avoid copying gigabytes of data in and out of the drive.

  It's possible to claim that manual partitioning should be 100% the
  user's responsibility, but I would still expect an error to be raised
  if something in the setup is incompatible.

  The error from grub itself is also not informative.

  By rewriting the partition table, I got a valid GPT layout and the
  installation succeeded.

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