Install fails to get past Manual Partition Screen

[reckless-symmetry]

Background
Have installed X/K/Ubuntu on many machines since 2006,
always from .ISO on a USB stick and with a hard drive that was pre-partioned using GParted.
I always choose manual install so I can choose which partition to install a new system on.
This procedure generally works and gives me systems that multiboot different versions of Ubuntu.

Also I have successfully installed Xubuntu 24.04.1 into multiple Qemu virtual machines,
so the 24.04.1 installer generally works for me.

This Install
This is my first attempt to install 24.04.1 onto hardware (as opposed to a vm).
Tried to install Xubuntu 24.04.1 onto two relatively new Clevo machines
(one dated 2022 from System 76 and the other dated 2024)
both with Uefi boot.
Both machines have 3 partitions available for system installs,
two of which already have different configurations of Xubuntu 22.04
and one is empty.
These machines have never smelt Windows so no complications from that.

Both of course already have have /boot partitions (with /boot/efi)
for booting the existing systems and both are flagged correctly.

What Fails
I boot from the usb stick with 24.04.1 on it
and the install proceeds normally until the Manual partitioning page.

The first step of this Manual partitioning is to select the
Device for Bootloader installation.

I have tried selecting
nvme0n1
and the existing boot partition
nvme0n1/p3
but the Next button never becomes highlighted,
so I cannot progress to the next screen.

Here is an image of where I am halted:

Nothing I can do causes the Next button to activate.

and here is the partition structure of that machine:

I am planning to install to p6 (/) and p7 (/home).

Feels likely to be a bug, but what bug I can’t guess,
and a scan of the 288 bugs reported against
ubuntu-desktop-provision show nobody with the same problem.

I checked /var/log/installer/* but can’t see any insults.
Any clues or workarounds?

[Dennis_N]

I don’t see any mount point for p6 in your image from the installer. Wouldn’t you need to use the change button to mark p6 for use as /?

[reckless-symmetry]

you are correct - I failed to understand the interface.
Have put detail below for anyone else similarly foxed.

[reckless-symmetry]

The problem is I completely failed to understand the interface.

1 The label
Device for bootloader installation
does not mean this is the first screen, just for selecting /boot.
In fact it is the only screen dealing with partitions,
and all selections (/boot, / /home etc) get made here.

2 ‘Change’ actually means ‘Use’ or ‘Select’.
So selecting a partition and clicking ‘Change’
enables you to select it for use.

3 So you also use ‘Change’ to select the existing /boot partition for /boot,
not the combo box at the bottom

4 After selecting partitions on nvme0n1 for /boot, / and /home,
I again returned to the
Device for bootloader installation
combo box and tried to select nvme0n1
but it kept returning to sda1 (the usb stick).
A little worrying but I decided to ignore this and hope for the best.
I don’t understand my wife, my kids or life,
why should I expect to understand an installer?

5 A few screens later it shows what it plans to install where,
to give you a final chance to check or go back and fix.
The screen was correct,
so the “Device for bootloader installation” combo box
seemed to have no effect.

The install then went ahead with no problems.

[oldfred]

It seems a bit confusing that the ESP - efi system partition as FAT32 with boot,esp flags is mounted inside /boot, but is not a separate /boot partition, A separate boot partition has to be Linux formatted, but standard installs do not use a /boot partition. Server installs with LVM or full drive encryption with LVM often use a separate /boot partition.

You show only 20FV for / and 4GB for /home? That may work for root if not installing any snaps. Have seen users with snaps alone using 20GB. If small /home better to just keep it inside / and have all data in separate data partition(s).

[reckless-symmetry]

mounted inside /boot

yes, agree it is a bit confusing.
It would be better to have separate /efi and /grub partitions.
Last time I set up a new machine I couldn’t see how to do that
though my VMs are set up with them separate.
Will try to separate them next time I set up a new machine.

You show only 20gb for / and 4GB==gb for /home?

Am using that size on 18.04, 22.04 and 24.04 and it is plenty.
I dont use snaps.
This is the usage on the 22.04 host I’m on now, and this host is running 3 VMs at the moment
plus having a lot of large applications (kdenlive,audacity,browsers,libreoffice…)

Filesystem     1M-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p4    20498M  15718M     3714M  81% /
/dev/nvme0n1p3     1950M      7M     1944M   1% /boot/efi
/dev/nvme0n1p8   865702M 661528M   160127M  81% /0docs
/dev/nvme0n1p5     2876M   1362M     1349M  51% /home

(fwiw, I keep the VMs (4gb in total) on the data partition so I can easily sync them to other machines).

just keep it inside / and have all data in separate data partition(s)

I prefer to keep system, user settings and data separate
/home is just for settings and you may have seen all data is in a separate 855mb /0docs partition that can be accessed by any of the host systems on the machine.

Once I have successfully installed a new version (say 24.04) on one machine,
which may take me 4 days,
I can then copy most of the system partition directly to all my other machines, fixing only fstab and host and not overwriting /boot.
Copying the /home partition never worked as well, (though I will try this again next time. )
so I tend to just copy across settings that will apply to both.