Ubuntu
ubiquity package

edgy knot 3, installer formated a partition I didn't asked for (windows ntfs)

Bug #61732 reported by Nir Misgav
62
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
ubiquity (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
High
Colin Watson
Ubuntu ubuntu-6.10-beta

Bug Description

Binary package hint: ubiquity

I did manual partition,
gparted was opened, I used it to shrink my ntfs (windows) partition hda1 (20GB to 16GB), and I deleted my ext3 partition hda2 (18GB), and created a new one on all the free space that was created.
I didn't touch hda3 (extended partition) which inside has the swap partition.

After that comes the screen that ask what to mount where.
I changed "/media/hda1" to "/media/windows" and verified that the check-box 'reformat' is unchecked.

I started the install, and the first thing I noticed is that the installation is formatting the hda1 to ext3!!

I mounted the partition and it's empty indeed.

Revision history for this message
Vassilis Pandis (pandisv) wrote :

Could you please attach /var/log/installer/syslog, /var/log/syslog, and /var/log/partman to this bug, by commenting on the bug's web page? Thanks in advance.

Changed in ubiquity:
status: Unconfirmed → Needs Info
Revision history for this message
Nir Misgav (nirmisgav) wrote :
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Nir Misgav (nirmisgav) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Nir Misgav (nirmisgav) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Nir Misgav (nirmisgav) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Nir Misgav (nirmisgav) wrote :

/var/log/installer/partman

Revision history for this message
Nir Misgav (nirmisgav) wrote :

/var/log/syslog (after reboot)

Revision history for this message
Nir Misgav (nirmisgav) wrote :

I'm sorry if you see multiple messages. This is obviously bug in launchpad because I uploaded messages (empty with file attached), they were sent to me by email, but they are not shown in this site.

Vassilis Pandis (pandisv)
Changed in ubiquity:
status: Needs Info → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
towsonu2003 (towsonu2003) wrote :

need to bump up importance...

Revision history for this message
Vassilis Pandis (pandisv) wrote :

This seems indeed to be the case :

mountpoints: {'/dev/hda5': ('swap', True, None), '/dev/hda1': ('/media/windows', False, None), '/dev/hda2': ('/', True, 'ext3')}

indicates that it shouldn't have been formatted, but according to the partman log, it was

Changed in ubiquity:
importance: Untriaged → High
Revision history for this message
Will Daniels (wdaniels) wrote :

The same thing just happened to me - Edgy installer (Knot 3 CD) formatted my ext2 Dapper partition even though I unchecked the "reformat" box. Obviously I should have made a backup, but fact is I didn't, so now I've lost everything! Is there any way to recover some of this data?

I have kept the log files previously mentioned if another set will be of use in fixing the problem.

Colin Watson (cjwatson)
Changed in ubiquity:
assignee: nobody → kamion
status: Confirmed → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

I'm very sorry for this - full recovery is probably not possible, although since formatting doesn't typically erase the entire disk (but just writes new metadata to a few places in it) you may be able to recover some data from the raw disk image. Anyway, this should be fixed for the Edgy beta:

ubiquity (1.1.25) edgy; urgency=high

  * Not knowing the filesystem type for a partition apparently doesn't
    necessarily mean that it's unformatted, so don't format partitions
    without a detected filesystem type (closes: Malone #61732).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:51:57 +0100

Changed in ubiquity:
status: In Progress → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Mantas Kriaučiūnas (mantas) wrote :

Will Daniels wrote:
> Is there any way to recover some of this data?

Yea, you could use photorec from testdisk suite (look at http://www.cgsecurity.org ). But you should don't write any data to that partition before recovering (or you can make disk partition backup with "dd" (or maybe with partimage) command.

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