Bug#777647: partman-efi always complains when installing from usb

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Control: tag -1 moreinfo

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 08:33:29AM +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:30:32PM -0500, Phillip Susi wrote:
>>Package: partman-efi
>>Version: 59
>>
>>partman-efi uses flawed logic that trips up when installing from usb.
>>init.d/efi scans the system and counts the number of efi system
>>partitions, and the number of non efi system partitions.  If it does not
>>find an EFI system partition, but does find at least one non ESP, then
>>it throws the non_efi_system warning/question.  The problem is that when
>>installing to a disk that does not already have an efi system partition,
>>the script *always* detects a non EFI system partition, and throws the
>>warning.  This may be connected to a recent change in libparted.
>>Looking at the partman logs and the output after adding a set -x to the
>>init.d/efi script, it appears to me that what is happening is that the
>>system asks libparted to create a new partition on the hard disk that
>>will become an EFI system partition.  Either init.d/efi runs before the
>>partition has been formatted with a fat filesystem, or parted_server is
>>still running and is keeping the "ext2" fs type cached from before it
>>was formatted.  Either way, the script decides it sees an ext2
>>filesystem on the drive, and that counts as a non EFI system partition,
>>and so it throws the message.
>
>Ugh. :-(
>
>I'm just about to go on VAC for a few weeks, it's going to be
>difficult to find time to try and fix this. Help would be very
>welcome!

Hmmm, and just testing with the latest Debian amd64 daily netinst all
works flawlessly here still, using the same empty disk in a KVM setup
as your bug reporter.

This suggests the problem is Ubuntu-specific, or there's an issue with
other software. You allude to potential changes in libparted; how do
the versions in Debian and Ubuntu compare here?

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me