[Bug 1893964] Re: Installation of Ubuntu Groovy with manual partitioning fails on 'grub-install /dev/sda'

[Jan Rathmann]

Further testing, I found out that the grub installation failure seems to
be related to whether there is an EFI System Partition (ESP) or not.

I did the following change to my VirtualBox setup to manually create an ESP:
- Shrink the single partition on my virtual HD with GParted so I get 512MB free space at the end of the disk
- Create an additional primary FAT32 partition with 512MB size, mark it as ESP (with cfdisk)

So I have the following partition layout:
/dev/sda1: primary partion, size ~9,5GB, ext4
/dev/sda2: primary partition, size 512MB, fat32, marked as ESP

With this partition layout and selecting /dev/sda1 as root (marked for
formating) the installation will complete successfully without an error
regarding grub installation, and the installed system boots fine.

So it seems that this bug happens if there is no ESP on the system -
even if the system doesn't support UEFI at all and thus doesn't need an
ESP.

** Summary changed:

- Installation of Ubuntu Groovy with manual partitioning fails on 'grub-install /dev/sda'
+ Installation of Ubuntu Groovy with manual partitioning without an EFI System Partition fails on 'grub-install /dev/sda' even on non-UEFI systems

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1893964

Title:
  Installation of Ubuntu Groovy with manual partitioning without an EFI
  System Partition fails on 'grub-install /dev/sda' even on non-UEFI
  systems

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Hello,

  trying to install current daily-live images of Groovy in VirtualBox
  fails for me when I'm using manual partitioning.

  Steps to reproduce:

  1. Partition layout I have used in VirtualBox:
   * Partition table: MBR
   * A single primary ext4 partition (/dev/sda1) using up the entire virtual harddisk with 1 MB free space before start of the partition
  2. Boot current Groovy daily-live image, click on "Install Ubuntu"
  3. Choose "Something else" (manual partitioning)
  4. Select /dev/sda1 as target for '/', check "format partition".
  5. Ignore warning about missing EFI system partition.

  Result:

  The installation proceeds until GRUB is about to be installed.
  Then an error dialog appears: "Executing 'grub-install /dev/sda' failed. This is a fatal error." (screenshot attached).
  If I click 'Ok', after a moment Ubiquity nevertheless shows the usual dialog saying "Installation is complete. Please restart." The only option the dialog offered was to click on "Restart now".
  After that, booting the failed installation succeeds, but it is obvious that Ubiquity couldn't complete its job: Packages like ubiquity itself, which usually get purged from the fresh system at the end of a successful installation, are still installed. There is also a pop-up in gnome-shell showing an error regarding package management (screenshot attached, not sure if this is related to the failed install). 

  To send this report, I was running 'sudo ubuntu-bug ubiquity' on the
  "failed", but nevertheless booting fresh installation.

  Kind regards, Jan

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
  Package: ubiquity 20.10.9
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-42.46-generic 5.4.44
  Uname: Linux 5.4.0-42-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu45
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
  Date: Wed Sep  2 16:55:14 2020
  InstallCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-42-generic root=UUID=6ba06971-16c7-4df6-afcc-3bc101cba9a5 ro quiet splash
  SourcePackage: ubiquity
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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