[Bug 993221] [NEW] installer silently overwrote existing partition

[Peter Teuben]

Public bug reported:

During a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 on an old system partition, i
decided to already use my existing /home partition so it would be
mounted when booting back. My laptop in this case is triple boot, and I
decided I wanted to keep the Ubuntu 10.10 until happy with 12.04.

For some odd reason you need to pick the type of partition
(ext3,ext4,...) when re-using /home, which will then be used. I guessed
wrong. It was ext3, and i told it was ext4. That's problem one, because
at this stage the installer could be complained or picked ext3. I
explicitly did not tag this partition to be formatted, in fact, only
/dev/sda3 (my new /) was tagged for reformat, I also re-used /dev/sda1,
which is /boot for me, to handle a shared /boot between the triple boots
on this machine.

The sad outcome of this interaction was that my /home (which was ext3)
was reformatted to ext4 , which is totally unacceptable! The installer
program should have come up with a dialog that it would reformat a
partition that wasn't tagged to be reformatted.

I found /var/log/installer/partman with information on this chain of
events.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: ubiquity (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.37-generic-pae 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu7
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed May  2 08:00:03 2012
InstallCmdLine: file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- maybe-ubiquity
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release i386 (20120423)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/tcsh
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

** Affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: apport-bug i386 precise ubiquity-2.10.16

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/993221

Title:
  installer silently overwrote existing partition

Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  During a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 on an old system partition, i
  decided to already use my existing /home partition so it would be
  mounted when booting back. My laptop in this case is triple boot, and
  I decided I wanted to keep the Ubuntu 10.10 until happy with 12.04.

  For some odd reason you need to pick the type of partition
  (ext3,ext4,...) when re-using /home, which will then be used. I
  guessed wrong. It was ext3, and i told it was ext4. That's problem
  one, because at this stage the installer could be complained or picked
  ext3. I explicitly did not tag this partition to be formatted, in
  fact, only /dev/sda3 (my new /) was tagged for reformat, I also re-
  used /dev/sda1, which is /boot for me, to handle a shared /boot
  between the triple boots on this machine.

  The sad outcome of this interaction was that my /home (which was ext3)
  was reformatted to ext4 , which is totally unacceptable! The installer
  program should have come up with a dialog that it would reformat a
  partition that wasn't tagged to be reformatted.

  I found /var/log/installer/partman with information on this chain of
  events.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: ubiquity (not installed)
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.37-generic-pae 3.2.14
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic-pae i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu7
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Wed May  2 08:00:03 2012
  InstallCmdLine: file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- maybe-ubiquity
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release i386 (20120423)
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=xterm
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/tcsh
  SourcePackage: ubiquity
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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