Bug 19201

Summary:	Is GPT silently selected for new MBR formatting ?
Product:	Mageia	Reporter:	Frank Griffin <ftg>
Component:	RPM Packages	Assignee:	Mageia Bug Squad <bugsquad>
Status:	RESOLVED OLD	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	Normal	CC:	thierry.vignaud
Version:	Cauldron	Keywords:	NEEDINFO
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Source RPM:	drakxtools	CVE:
Status comment:

Description Frank Griffin 2016-08-16 18:26:23 CEST

I just tried a fresh install on a system in which I had installed a single 1.5TB disk.  There had been several non-root partitions on the disk, which I deleted using diskdrake.  I then proceeded to define a new set of partitions.

However, when I clikced "Done", I got the following popup:

"You must have a BIOS boot partition for non-UEFI GPT partitioned disks.  Please create one before continuing."

I had never used this disk as a bootable disk before, although it was present in MGA4 and MGA5 systems as a data volume, so I can't swear that it didn't come from the manufacturer with a GPT partition table installed.  However, if diskdrake silently put a GPT there instead of a BIOS MBR by default, I'd find that disturbing.

I booted a rescue disk and used fdisk to explicitly write a BIOS MBR and then manually defined the same partitions I had defined before.  This time when I tried the install, it was quite happy to proceed.

Comment 1 Thierry Vignaud 2016-08-16 19:24:20 CEST

We keep the existing format.
We would need the /root/drakx/report.bug.xz of that installation...

Keywords: (none) => NEEDINFO
CC: (none) => thierry.vignaud

Comment 2 Frank Griffin 2016-08-16 19:39:19 CEST

If you think we keep the existing format, that's good enough for me.  I'll double-check with another fresh-from-manufacturer large drive to see if it came with a GPT.  Unfortunately, the report.bug is gone.

Comment 3 Thierry Vignaud 2016-08-16 20:01:48 CEST

Yes, I've made this sure since July 31:
http://gitweb.mageia.org/software/drakx/commit/perl-install/partition_table.pm?id=0810aa1a87ba9ded271f3c3d8037787d9866e1a0

Since mid June, we use GPT on disks bigger than 2Tb instead of bigger than 4Tb:
http://gitweb.mageia.org/software/drakx/commit/perl-install/partition_table.pm?id=9891f350e692121f3661cc77f845e89ac4f0c79a
which makes me realize we were wrongly switched from MBR to GPT for disks between 2 & 4 Tb thus the above fix

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => OLD