This bug still persists with Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop. I installed Windows 7 SP1 64-bit on a harddisk scavenged from a Mac today. i deleted all current partitions and split the drive in two partitions in the Windows installer. Windows automatically created a small third partition at the beginning of the drive, which I assume is meant for the GPT. I installed Windows on one half of the drive, and left the other half unpartitioned.
Then, I tried installing Ubuntu 12.04 from the Desktop live-cd. At the partitioning step the installed mentioned that it didn't detect another OS on the computer so to avoid the 'wipe all' option I opted to partition manually. No partitions were visible in the tool, so I exited the installer. Both Disk Utility and Gparted show some partitions. Only Disk Utility shows the small 100MB boot partition, Gparted does not. Both tools recognize the drive has a GUID partition table. Both tools are unable to create a new partition in the empty space, but Gparted spits out the following warning: ==================================================== Error creating partition: helper exited with exit code 1: In part_add_partition: device_file=/dev/sda, start=57777586176, size=62256537600, type=0x83 Entering MS-DOS parser (offset=0, size=120034123776) MSDOS_MAGIC found looking at part 0 (offset 1048576, size 104857600, type 0x07) new part entry looking at part 1 (offset 105906176, size 57671680000, type 0x07) new part entry looking at part 2 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00) new part entry looking at part 3 (offset 0, size 0, type 0x00) new part entry Exiting MS-DOS parser MSDOS partition table detected containing partition table scheme = 0 got it Warning: /dev/sda contains GPT signatures, indicating that it has a GPT table. However, it does not have a valid fake msdos partition table, as it should. Perhaps it was corrupted -- possibly by a program that doesn't understand GPT partition tables. Or perhaps you deleted the GPT table, and are now using an msdos partition table. Is this a GPT partition table? got disk new partition added partition start=57777586176 size=62256520704 committed to disk Error doing BLKPG ioctl with BLKPG_ADD_PARTITION for partition 1 of size 57777586176 at offset 62256520704 on /dev/sda: Device or resource busy ==================================================== -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/798285 Title: Installer won't detect existing oS or partition table. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/798285/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs