[Bug 769669] Re: Installer should not format an existing EFI System Partition

[Keshav]

I will file a bug report for FAT32 vs FAt16. But I do not use Ubuntu
directly and modified this bug report only becuase few users reported
problems in dual-bot scenario when using FAT16 EFISYS which were solved
if FAT32 EFISYS was used.

BTW NTFS is not supposed to be the FS for EFISYS partition. As per my
understanding of the Spec, EFISYS part should be FAT32 for non-removable
media, and FAT32 or FAT16 for removable media (with FAT12 being used for
floppy discs/images). I think it might me am case of misdetection of the
FS.

Also where is the 250 MB (or is it MiB)  minimum size for FAT32. I have
used FAT32 in 100-200 MiB partitions (both EFISYS and normal data ones)
and have not faced any problems (no warnings/errors reported by fsck or
windows chkdsk utils regarding minimum size limit).

While the spec does not specify a minimum size for EFISYS partition, it
is generally accepted by many OS vendors to be at least 100 MiB size
(200 MiB recomended).

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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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