Comment 6 for bug 369048

Colin, thank you very much for stepping in and with you, finally someone taking on this unfortunate, already way too long lasting Ubuntu-specific installer bug.

Until your replies in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/260001/comments/74 and following, I did not know, how the bug duplication process works. So I initially followed the yellow box advice given here and shifted my further comments to bug #260001. When I was pointed towards bug #185878 from a 3rd party and also started to follow up on its ancestral duplicates, I realized that bug #260001 definitively is the wrong one for my problem, so I continued back here and also left a comment in bug #185878, because that felt like the right place to be and I didn't know, how the re-assignment of this one to other bugs works.
My comment https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/260001/comments/73 was not in respect to the previous 72 comments in bug #260001, but what I found in #14010 and #123102, before being sure, to be in the wrong place there.

Well, I didn't mean to be impolite and from my point of view it certainly didn't appear to be so, but the deeper I had to dig into this issue and following up on older bug reports like #14010 and #123102 - which weirdly are considered to be duplicates of the much younger bug #185878 - in order to submit my comments here, the more frustrated I got, since nothing seemed to have happened at all about it during the last 4 years:

- Bug #14010 "grub-install fails for JFS root partition":
  2005-03-15 Brian reports "...went fine except for the installation of Grub to the MBR. It
attempts, then says that it fails. It will not install to the partition
superblock either."
  2005-03-16 Confirmed by Rob.
  2006-01-08 Pedro Alejandro adds "This problem occurs when you try to install grub to a partiton superblock and the filesystem type is not ext2/3."
  2007-03-28 Steve: "I confirm this bug is still present in Feisty Beta 1 Alternate installer CD."
 "Install bootloader to MBR?" I chose No, and instead said to install to /dev/sda9 (SATA drive). As error message told me that grub-install failed and this was fatal.
  2007-08-07 OS/2-User wrote "Desktop installer *always* fails to install GRUB on a separate /boot partition ((hd0,5) 24MB), formatted as JFS". (This was one of my my first investigative steps into Linux-Land and ended quite disappointing).
  2007-08-26 steve wrote "Confirmed (again) for Gutsy Tribe-5 (installing to jfs root partition)."
  2008-03-27 Pedro Alejandro wrote "If you install stage1 to the root partition superblock, it fails."
  2008-05-09 Richard's final question "Do we know if this was fixed for the final release?" remained unanswered.
The bug is currently classified as "Status Confirmed", "Importance Medium", so obviously not fixed yet and apparently not worked on either.

- Bug #123102 "Installation of GRUB on a reiserfs partition always fails":
  2007-06-29 M. Vefa wrote "to install GRUB on a reiserfs partition instead of the MBR, the installation fails with the following message: "Executing 'grub-install (hd0,9)' failed. This is a fatal error.""
  2007-08-07 OS/2-User wrote "..having '/' on a 10GB JFS and tried to get /boot on a 24MB JFS as well, which always failed with the same error message as described by the OP."
  2007-08-08 Henning Moll wrote "... use button 'advanced' to set the grub installation target to (hd0,4). The installation will fail on 94%"
  2008-05-19 zebul666 wrote "i installed hardy heron 8.04 desktop x86 edition from the live cd on a reiserfs partition and used the advanced button at the last stage of installer to install grub on the / partition instead of the MBR and grub-install failed with the error described above."
The bug is currently classified as "Status Confirmed", "Importance Undecided", so obviously not fixed yet and apparently not worked on either.

Well, I most definitively don't want to start an argument, but based on the above I don't see much of an inaccuracy in what I wrote about the long existence of this installer bug and it plaguing Ubuntu until today.

I also beg to differ, that wanting to install Ubuntu's initial boot loader code into a partition's, rather than the master boot record and/or use one of the many available FSs other than the notorious ext[n], is nothing uncommon at all. There are plenty of very good reasons for wanting to do just that, if Ubuntu is not meant to become the dominating OS.
This btw. would make a fine candidate for http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904#Other%20known%20issues.

With Ubuntu being advertised quite successful as a Windows alternative, would installing GRUB into the MBR as default not wipe out M$' boot loader code and cause all kind of hassle, if people want to go back?
In one comment I came across, the author specifically mentioned that he also absolutely refuses to let GRUB go into the MBR and only allows a PBR, just for that very reason. He considers it way to bothersome otherwise having to try to get the M$ boot loader restored, if needed. So even Windows users are going off mainstream.