[Bug 769669] Re: Installer should not format an existing EFI SYSTEM PARTITION and should use FAT32 instead of FAT16 as the FS

[Colin Watson]

Keshav, please do not overload bug reports.  Bug reports should be about
a single problem, not multiple problems.  Please file your complaint
about FAT16 vs. FAT32 separately.

That said, I deliberately used FAT16 where possible because it seemed to
me that the minimum size of 256MB for a FAT32 partition was likely to be
somewhat inconvenient.  At the time, I read the UEFI specification and
determined that it in fact did meet its requirements (I read the section
you mention, but there's another section somewhere else that I believed
to be relevant).  I'm not going to dig it up as part of this bug report,
but I could look into it if you file a separate one.

** Summary changed:

- Installer should not format an existing EFI SYSTEM PARTITION and should use FAT32 instead of FAT16 as the FS
+ Installer should not format an existing EFI System Partition

** Changed in: partman-efi (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Triaged

** Changed in: partman-efi (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => High

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/769669

Title:
  Installer should not format an existing EFI System Partition

Status in “partman-efi” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: partman-efi

  When selecting an EFI partition under parted during ubiquity install
  on 11.04, there is no option to select mount point.  As windows 7 had
  installed an EFI partition at /dev/sda1 formatted to NTFS, I selected
  that.  I did not select that it should format the mount point, but it
  did anyway to FAT16 and deleted the windows bootloader.  Update-grub
  does not find windows, and I had to go to great lengths to reinstall
  the bootloader to the same partition as windows, it is still missing
  from /dev/sda.

  I had expected that even if /dev/sda1 was formatted, it would at least
  preserve the existing bootloader instead of putting me in a position
  where I had to use a windows recovery disk for several hours until I
  can now at least boot to windows using the bios, but grub is still
  unaware of the windows install.  I expected windows to overwrite grub,
  but I didn't expect installing linux to break my windows install.

  I encountered this bug after having the problems in this bug:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/765270.

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