[Bug 684292] Re: Installing to USB drive (sdb) using automatic partitioning writes MBR to internal drive (sda) without warning or giving option to change

[Colin Watson]

** Summary changed:

- Installing to USB drive (sdb), writes MBR to internal drive (sda) without warning or giving option to change
+ Installing to USB drive (sdb) using automatic partitioning writes MBR to internal drive (sda) without warning or giving option to change

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/684292

Title:
  Installing to USB drive (sdb) using automatic partitioning writes MBR
  to internal drive (sda) without warning or giving option to change

Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu:
  New
Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: ubiquity

  Ubiquity on 10.10 installs MBR on sda regardless of the fact that the
  full install went on sdb (external USB).

  Expected behavior (which was default in previous versions of ubiquity
  where we had an "Advanced" button at the end) is that if you install
  to an external drive, the MBR gets placed on the external drive device
  (example: if sdb is a usb drive and / is being installed on sdb1, then
  sdb should be the recipient of the grub-install's MBR placement).

  This is a type of regression which looks like a previous regression
  bug I reported (Bug #549756) which was fixed and now has crawled back
  into Maverick. When installing to an external drive, the idea is that
  the external drive will be self sufficient to boot itself on any
  number of machines, meaning it will contain the MBR and the root
  partition. However when installing to an external device, using the
  standard simplistic view, there is no mention of the MBR being written
  to the internal disk.

  The result is a USB drive which will not boot and a GRUB menu on your
  internal drive with extra entries. It may also cause a windows user
  installing to USB (not wanting to risk his MBR), to lose his MBR on
  the internal drive to GRUB.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
  Package: ubiquity 2.4.8
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.33-generic 2.6.35.4
  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: wl
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Thu Dec  2 16:35:04 2010
  LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: ubiquity

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