Ubuntu Installer borks up partitions?

[Sander Smeenk]

Quoting Tom H (tomh0665 at gmail.com):
> >> Reporting "I can't recreate the Ubuntu installer's disk layout without
> >> using sfdisk and --force" is unlikely to be considered much of an
> >> issue by anyone.
> > Really?
> Yes. File a bug and post the link here...

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/parted/+bug/742164 seems to be
much like what i described. Aparently parted is what is used by the
installer to create the partition table, but i haven't got to digging
deeper yet.


> > Isn't you saying "i havent been able to use sfdisk [to recreate a broken
> > partition table layout] without using --force" exactly what describes a
> > problem ('issue') in the Ubuntu Installer partition layouts?
> Where do Ubuntu's or util-linux's developers give you an assurance
> that you'll be able to replicate with fdisk/sfdisk the partition
> layout that the Ubuntu installer creates.

It would seem logical to me that the partition table Ubuntu produces
when it gets installed, can later on be manipulated with the tools Ubuntu
provides.

Currently it doesn't.

Using '--force' options doesn't count.
There is a reason why these tools say 'not properly aligned'.


> Using "--force" isn't an issue;
> AFAIK "--force" is needed because sfdisk unlike fdisk still cares
> about cylinders and emits warnings about it.  Furthermore it isn't
> unusual to force something.

Simply brilliant.


> installer uses "grub2-install --force" to install grub2 to a partition
> if the user requests it and its user and test mailing lists are full
> advice to use "--force" manually because that's the official (and
> only) way to replicate what used to be more straightforward with
> grub1. They may stop giving this advice at some point, either because
> they will choose to concur with grub2 upstream or because EFI is
> making embedding grub a prehistoric factoid.

And i really have no idea what you are talking about.


I debootstrap servers on regular basis and create my own partition
tables on my disks. In doing so, tools like cfdisk, fdisk, sfdisk and
even parted have been used to create and modify the tables and neither
of them has ever shown any problems in resizing the layouts. And grub
installs fine.

It's true that 'fdisk'-tools can have a different view on disks:
cylinders or sectors. But i haven't come across an 'fdisk'-tool that
does not support manipulating the partition table in either 'mode'.


We should switch to GPT anyways.

-Sndr.
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