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

[Roderick Smith]

I've verified Przemyslaw Kulczycki's report that this problem is still
present in 12.04 alpha 2. Do the developers REALLY want this bug to be
present in a long-term support release? It's only going to become more
of an issue with time. Since UEFI-based computers are now shipping in
droves, more and more people will be encountering this bug, which will
render them unable to boot Windows (or whatever other OS may be
installed already), and getting really ticked off about it. The average
user won't know how to fix a trashed ESP, and a user who spends an
afternoon trying to fix the problem will blame Ubuntu -- and rightly so!

PLEASE fix this bug! As Bob Kerns wrote in post #18, it should be
considered a "showstopper!"

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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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