mactel-support team mailing list archive

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Perfect, that's just what I thought.

There are two causes for this bug. The first was that, in Hardy, I fixed
bug 107326, which meant that GPT support was broken for everyone *not*
on an Apple system. (That's the reason why simply reverting to an older
version is not the answer here; I don't like toggling between bugs!) The
second is that Apple changed their company name in early 2007 from
"Apple Computer, Inc." to "Apple Inc.", and so all machines manufactured
since then identify themselves with the new name rather than the old
name. Most of the installer was updated some time back (see
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=483182) but we forgot
about parted.

I'll get this fixed in Jaunty very shortly, and we should issue an
update for at least Ubuntu 8.04.3 as well. (Intrepid is trickier since
we have no plans to produce updated CD images, but I suppose parted is
used on the installed system too.)

** Also affects: parted (Ubuntu Hardy)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu Hardy)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: parted (Ubuntu Intrepid)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu Intrepid)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Hardy)
       Status: New => Invalid

** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Intrepid)
       Status: New => Invalid

** Changed in: parted (Ubuntu Hardy)
   Importance: Undecided => High

** Changed in: parted (Ubuntu Hardy)
       Status: New => Triaged

** Changed in: parted (Ubuntu Hardy)
     Assignee: (unassigned) => Colin Watson (cjwatson)

** Changed in: parted (Ubuntu Hardy)
    Milestone: None => ubuntu-8.04.3

** Changed in: parted (Ubuntu Intrepid)
   Importance: Undecided => High

** Changed in: parted (Ubuntu Intrepid)
       Status: New => Triaged

** Changed in: parted (Ubuntu Intrepid)
     Assignee: (unassigned) => Colin Watson (cjwatson)

-- 
Partition Table is cleared during install on Intel Macs
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/222126
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mactel
Support, which is the registrant for Mactel Support.

Status in grub-installer: Invalid
Status in Mactel Support: Confirmed
Status in “parted” source package in Ubuntu: Triaged
Status in “ubiquity” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
Status in parted in Ubuntu Hardy: Triaged
Status in ubiquity in Ubuntu Hardy: Invalid
Status in parted in Ubuntu Intrepid: Triaged
Status in ubiquity in Ubuntu Intrepid: Invalid
Status in parted in Ubuntu Jaunty: Triaged
Status in ubiquity in Ubuntu Jaunty: Invalid

Bug description:
Binary package hint: ubiquity

Ubuntu 8.04 Final

Intel Macs have an EFI system and a GPT. The installer seems to handle the GPT correctly (as it has in the past), but it has recently come up that the installer is completely emptying the contents of the MBR partition table which is still required to boot Windows and Ubuntu (GRUB relies on the MBR partition table). The two tables are not synced automatically.

When users install Hardy, they are suprised to find that the system is unbootable (the EFI loader cannot "see" the partition as bootable). a tool such as rEFIt or gptsync can copy the information in the GPT into the MBR table thus fixing the issue (for most). 

This is even more serious for users with other working OS installs in addition to Ubuntu (such as other linux distros and Windows) since it completely dumps the information needed to boot these installs as well.

The expected procedure (and how the previous Ubuntu install seems to have handled it) is to 'update' both the GPT and the MBR table with changes instead of completely losing the information stored there.

gparted / parted seemed to update both tables properly previously as well.

I will be doing a full install on my iMac later and will be able to add additional information.