Installing Desktop 18.04 LTS

[yegnal]

I have a tower with multiple drives. It dual boots Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.xx on separate physical SSD drives. When I installed 16.xx I needed to choose 'something else' and create my own partitions. Only created three, swap, root, and home, and I had to choose 'Windows bootloader' from the dropdown asking where to install bootloader as the location to install it. Everything works fine.

Doing the same while installing Desktop 18.04 LTS causes an error, grub-efi-amd64-signed packagefailed to install into target
System does not boot Ubuntu, rather leaves me stranded at a Grub prompt.

Windows 10 boots, Ubuntu 18.xx does not.

Question is, why. Previous version of Ubuntu installed no problem........ What gives.

I tried adding an EFI partition to the setup, I tried choosing different locations for the bootloader. In all I've tried installing 10 times, at least.

I re-installed my previous version (16.04 Desktop LTS) with no issue.

What did the developers change in this latest version, and why fix what wasn't broken....... & how do I get my $15 back...........?

[dino99]

Since Bionic, the default is to use a swap file, and the 'manual' partitioning script is fully broken (at least when several storage devices are found) (plenty reports already lp:#1767703)
So the solution is to dist-upgrade 'manually' by setting 'bionic' instead of 'xenial' inside /etc/apt/sources.list, then 'save' . Then you can update/upgrade as usual (remember to use ppa-purge first if you have third party source(s).

[yegnal]

Am I to understand that 18.04 will never install cleanly and I am only able to upgrade from within 16.04 ?

Why the issue with grub suddenly, it's obviously better implemented in 16.04, why change that... it wasn't broken...

[Dennis N]

To show the current partitions on your drives, please post output of

sudo parted -l
It may reveal a problem you are not aware of.

[yegnal]

Am I missing something.. 16.04 has no such issue... installs perfectly fine... So why would a latter version crash when installing grub.. This should never happen, makes no sense. Problem is in development.

[yancek]

I just installed Ubuntu 18.04 to an external drive connected to a laptop with windows and 3 other Linux systems on the internal drive and one other Linux on the external. It took 20 minutes and I rebooted to 18.04, no problems whatsoever. Do you still have 16.04 or did you install 18.0 over it? It might be best to post more details on your system and the best way to do that is with the boot repair which you can get at the link below. Select the 2nd option to use the ppa, you can do this from the Ubuntu install usb. Run it with the Create BootInfo Summary option selected and do NOT try to make repairs. Post a link to the output here and someone should be able to help.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

[yegnal]

I'm not unappreciative of the interest shown or the advice being given to my query....

However it's obvious a change was made to the 18.04 installation package creating a problem with grub2. This issue "grub-efi-amd64-signed packagefailed to install into target"
is easily found in google and forum searches... I say obvious, "
a change was made to the 18.04 installation package" because again; 16.04 has no such issue, and installs perfectly fine.

I was able to get 18.04 by re-installing 16.04 and forcing an update to 18.04 in apt.

Model: ATASamsung SSD 850 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda:250GB
Sector size(logical/physical): 512B/512B
PartitionTable: gpt
DiskFlags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 473MB 472MB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag
2 473MB 578MB 105MB fat32 EFI system partition boot, esp
3 578MB 595MB 16.8MB Microsoft reservedpartition msftres
4 595MB 249GB 248GB ntfs Basic data partition msftdata
5 249GB 250GB 890MB ntfs hidden,diag


Model: ATASanDisk SDSSDHP1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb:128GB
Sector size(logical/physical): 512B/512B
PartitionTable: gpt
DiskFlags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 538MB 537MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot, esp
2 538MB 93.8GB 93.3GB ext4
3 93.8GB 128GB 34.2GB linux-swap(v1)


Model: ATA WDCWD1003FZEX-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc:1000GB
Sector size(logical/physical): 512B/4096B
PartitionTable: msdos
DiskFlags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 1000GB 1000GB primary


Model: ATA WDCWD1003FZEX-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd:1000GB
Sector size(logical/physical): 512B/4096B
PartitionTable: msdos
DiskFlags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 1000GB 1000GB primary


Model: ATA WDCWD5000AAKS-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sde:500GB
Sector size(logical/physical): 512B/512B
PartitionTable: msdos
DiskFlags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 500GB 500GB primary ntfs


Model: ATA WDCWD5000AAKS-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdf:500GB
Sector size(logical/physical): 512B/512B
PartitionTable: msdos
DiskFlags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 500GB 500GB primary ntfs

[Dennis N]

Your efi system partition is on sda2. I am wondering if the ubuntu installer might only install the efi grub files to sda1? Seems unlikely to me, but since I always have created an esp on sda1, don't know the answer. We already know it will not install grub to any other drive than sda. Someone here may know -> With ubuntu installer, can you have the efi partition on sdax where x is not = 1? I would test it, but don't have any system where I could.

[oldfred]

I have seen same issue on grub not installing with all older versions of Ubuntu. Usually then Boot-Repair fixes it with a reinstall.
But there does seem to be a lot more of that issue with 18.04.

I have installed to USB SSD and my sda drive. And installed one of the dailies a few weeks ago to sdb.
And in every case it has overwritten the /EFI/ubuntu folder in the ESP on my sda. And that still is my main working system 16.04. So I backup ESP on sda.

But every time it did install to ESP on sda without any errors.

If installing to a separate drive best to partition in advance and include an ESP, FAT32 with boot flag. Be sure to use gpt partitioning, not the 35 year old MBR(msdos). But Ubuntu's grub will not install to that even when you tell it to install to sdb and ESP on sdb exists. I just copy sda's ESP to sdb's ESP, but still use grub from sda to boot 18.04 on external or sdb.

If using UEFI, best to have all drives as gpt.
GPT Advantages (older 2010 but still valid) see post#2 by srs5694:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1457901
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GUID_Partition_Table#Advantages_of_GPT

[yegnal]

Again, why does 16.04 install without a hitch ?

[oldfred]

There have been major changes due to Meltdown & Spectre.
You also have to update UEFI to fully protect from them.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu-1804-6systems&num=1 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS has the Linux 4.15 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.29.1, Mesa 18.0-rc5, GCC 7.3.0, Python 2.7.15rc1, Python 3.6.5, and is mitigated for Meltdown with KPTI while for Spectre V1 it opts for __user pointer sanitization over OSB and for Spectre V2 has full Retpolines.