[Bug 798285] Re: Installer won't detect existing oS or partition table.

[Martijn Heemels]

This bug still persists with Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop.

I installed Windows 7 SP1 64-bit on a harddisk scavenged from a Mac
today. i deleted all current partitions and split the drive in two
partitions in the Windows installer. Windows automatically created a
small third partition at the beginning of the drive, which I assume is
meant for the GPT. I installed Windows on one half of the drive, and
left the other half unpartitioned.

Then, I tried installing Ubuntu 12.04 from the Desktop live-cd. At the
partitioning step the installed mentioned that it didn't detect another
OS on the computer so to avoid the 'wipe all' option I opted to
partition manually. No partitions were visible in the tool, so I exited
the installer.

Both Disk Utility and Gparted show some partitions. Only Disk Utility shows the small 100MB boot partition, Gparted does not.
Both tools recognize the drive has a GUID partition table.

Both tools are unable to create a new partition in the empty space, but
Gparted spits out the following warning:

====================================================
Error creating partition: helper exited with exit code 1: In part_add_partition: device_file=/dev/sda, start=57777586176, size=62256537600, type=0x83
Entering MS-DOS parser (offset=0, size=120034123776)
MSDOS_MAGIC found
looking at part 0 (offset 1048576, size 104857600, type 0x07)
new part entry
looking at part 1 (offset 105906176, size 57671680000, type 0x07)
new part entry
looking at part 2 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00)
new part entry
looking at part 3 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00)
new part entry
Exiting MS-DOS parser
MSDOS partition table detected
containing partition table scheme = 0
got it
Warning: /dev/sda contains GPT signatures, indicating that it has a GPT table.  However, it does not have a valid fake msdos partition table, as it should.  Perhaps it was corrupted -- possibly by a program that doesn't understand GPT partition tables.  Or perhaps you deleted the GPT table, and are now using an msdos partition table.  Is this a GPT partition table?
got disk
new partition
added partition start=57777586176 size=62256520704
committed to disk
Error doing BLKPG ioctl with BLKPG_ADD_PARTITION for partition 1 of size 57777586176 at offset 62256520704 on /dev/sda: Device or resource busy
====================================================

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/798285

Title:
  Installer won't detect existing oS or partition table.

Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I was trying to install a newer version of Ubuntu, 10.04/10.10. When I
  use live CD, it won't detect any existing OS or partitions. Same with
  Alternative installer: It won't see any partitions, just my hard
  drive. There have been many questions about this but none of them
  seemed to help.

  I wanted to have a new version of Ubuntu but preferably without having
  to re-install windows as well. I really don't know where the partition
  table went. The installers just don;t see anything. Both operating
  systems work fine, GRUB is always working correctly.

  The problem is described in more detail in question #159921. I hope
  this helps.

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