some more play on a testbox [ISO 2021-10-21]
- hp dc7700 (c2d-e6320, 5gb, nvidia quadro nvs 290)
it still has three partitions; sda1, sda2 & sda3
sda3 is likely corrupt (failed install was attempted to it last time), but sda1 & sta2 were RC install of impish and I believe still good. .
I select JFS, format & / as mount point for sda3; alas … I had what felt like weird behavior so used Go Back to try and explore… I couldn’t re-create it though and I won’t describe what I saw until it occurs again…
I did however EXIT the installer after selecting ERASE DISK and INSTALL Ubuntu (just exploring looking for the weird behavior, and as erase disk isn’t what I wanted [I’m a user; we do strange things, change our minds etc]), where I did what I suspect most users would do… hit to RED CROSS top right to close the program.
On re-starting the installer here, (tried twice), and on both I got
sda1 1MB
sda1 ext4 75GB
my real partitions are not shown !!
If I load gparted it instead shows
/dev/sda1 ext4 17.87GB
/dev/sda2 ext4 28.72GB
/dev/sda3 extended 27.94gb
unallocated (what is likely rubbish; failed install last time)
gparted did give an error “Libparted Error - Invalid partition table on /dev/sda - wrong signature on it”
That error maybe new; OR the result of last failed install las time; so I’m not worried about it… My intention was to just install into sda3 with format thus fixing any potential issues in that partition.
sda1 & sda2 should be untouched
I’ve clicked no acceptance of changes.
I also tried again with sda3 and selecting other formats; if I exited the program (using X top right), when I re-entered the program it would say sda3 was whatever format I’d last selected & not what I’d actually attempted to use/format it last time which is what I’d expect (unknown would be acceptable to me; not what I last picked in the canary installer but didn’t proceed with).
Sorry - this will be confusing & messy.
Summary - on exiting program; & starting installer; it appears
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to remember settings that were last selected, but not actually utilized (ie. no format occurred that I’m aware of)
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twice on re-entry it had a very different map of my drive to what I get from gparted & not what I expect.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OoRQ0YpmiclDBVliOnxaxOE9x_X2te7q/view?usp=sharing
Now it’s possible it did start formatting; or the disk does have errors; on rebooting it - I’m not getting grub again (just grub rescue); however sda3 was my last install (with ubiquity & failed canary installer; and all I touched today) so that doesn’t surprise me… entering a few commands (into grub rescue) & I can boot a Lubuntu/sda1 as expected… (I’d expect the same for sda2 too)… update-grubcorrectly detects itself (sda1) & sda2 (21.10) but not sda3 (corrupted; but that’s where I was playing so mess is expected there).
addendum: update-grub & grub-install /dev/sda gets errors I’ve not seen before (embedding not possible; blocklists.…) I’ll assume (given prior error) partition table has errors & start again on this box.
I then did a clean install to box; no issues.
On reboot was going to do the next install (install alongside in calamares, or auto-resize; but option doesn’t yet exist)…
exited canary-installed; used gparted to shrink install; the re-started installer… selected new area & selected JFS for /, but i was unable to click FORMAT the partition. As there is no fs there; I’d expect it to be auto-tagged; but I cannot click format… On clicking OK the format column is checked - ie. it does what I want; but will users be worried they couldn’t select ‘format’ when in the area (it wasn’t actionable - would be best if something to indicate a format needs to occur given I changed fs maybe).
this install started & progressed before problem detected & opening of text editor instead of firefox… (the contents in text editor fed to firefox manually)
