Ubiquity trying to rewrite partitions of unrelated disks?

[chconnor]

I have a spare partition (sdd2) and want to install Kubuntu 23.04 on it (for testing a bug with a fresh install.)

I boot, "Try Kubuntu", go to a terminal, and run

$ ubiquity -b kde_ui

...so that it will not try to install a bootloader anywhere. (My understand is that this the only way to do that.) My plan is to then reboot into my main install and let update-grub find the new install on sdd2.

At manual drive setup, I set / to mount at sdd2. Ubiquity finds two linux swap partitions and tries to snag those as well for the new install -- I set them to "do not use".

But then when I click through to start the install, the final confirmation screen says it's going to alter the partition tables of /dev/sdc and /dev/sde, which happen to be the drives that hold those (unused) swap partitions, and which shouldn't have anything at all to do with the install I am attempting (which is on /dev/sdd).

That spooks me, so I abandon the install.

Any idea how to prevent this? Or why it's altering the partition tables of drives that have nothing to do with the install?

Digging around online, I find a few threads about related-sounding stuff, but nothing that seems totally applicable:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...1124736_602828
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...y/+bug/1396379

[oshunluvr]

Unless I am misunderstanding the issue, that first link seems applicable and includes a solution/work-around.

[chconnor]

Hmmm, yeah, thanks -- I was confused and thought that wouldn't apply to my situation, but indeed, I disabled the sdc and sde ports via BIOS and it worked OK. Frustrating to have to go to these lengths. And if there was a swap partition on sdd I'm not sure this method would even work. At any rate, got it installed and it boots fine.

[oshunluvr]

Great that you got past it.. I understand the frustration but I also accept that everyone has a different idea of how <whatever thing> should work and sometimes there's no way for developers to prepare for EVERY variation in hardware and/or user desires.

The best course of action in my opinion is to report a well documented bug with logical reasoning as to why it should behave differently. It's possible in this instance it's not sourced from the KDE/Plasma or even Ubuntu developers but comes from further upstream. If there's enough interest and a solution can be found, the bug report might just help the entire community.