[Feature Request] enhance recipe format to allow specifying an existing partition

We'll look at this, but cannot promise a fix at this point; I have looked at other requests for the same feature in partman-auto in the past and it isn't straightforward to implement. I'll see what we can do.

Is there any plan to have this bug resolved in jaunty because it's seems already corrected in Colin's branch ?

Dell no longer has a use for this request with their current recovery solution.

I have a use case in which I'm trying to use a fully automated install using oem-config. I've taken Colin's branch and applied it to the latest version of partman-auto in Precise and built a test version of Ubiquity and have included it in a build.

The disk-recipe is written such that /home should be it's own partition. The intention is that if the partition does not exist, then a new one should be created. If the partition already exists, then it should be kept and left untouched.

However, using the diff from Colin's branch, I have run into a few issues and shortcomings.

1. When installing, Ubiquity would spin at the point that it starts to partition disks. After much investigation, I found this is due to error at this line in the diff:
    partno="$(echo "$*" | sed '\''s/.*\$partno{ \([0-9][0-9]*\) }.*/\1/'\'')"

I ended up addressing this by changing it to:
    partno="$(echo "$*" | sed 's/.*\$partno{ \([0-9][0-9]*\) }.*/\1/')"

I'm not sure if this really correct, but it seems to have fixed that problem.

2. The next issue I ran into is if I set the $partno{ x } directive and the partition does not exist, it goes into an infinite loop. I found the following code block to be the culprit:
     if [ -z "$partid" ]; then
        logger -t partman-auto \
        "Partition number $partno in recipe not found; creating new partition instead"
        continue
     fi

I then fixed this loop by changing this block to this:
     if [ -z "$partid" ]; then
        logger -t partman-auto \
        "Partition number $partno in recipe not found; creating new partition instead"
        scheme="$scheme_rest"
        continue
     fi

3. With the last change in place, the next issue I ran into is that if the partition does not exist, then a new one will not be created.

4. Lastly, If I leave the $partno directive out and let partman-auto create the partition and then add the $partno directive back in when the partition exists, then the partition will be preserved, but it is not added to /etc/fstab and so the partition is not automatically mounted and used by the install and the running system.

I am inclined to close this bug as fix-released.

partman-auto: gained automatically_partition/reuse & automatically_partition/replace strategies back in 2011-02-11.

This is meant to be reinstall without changing disk partitioning while preserving (reuse) or not preservering (replace) user configuration for the squashfs based install media.

If these automatic-partitioning strategies not good enough for one reason or the other (e.g. it does too much or not enough preservation) then please open a new bug explaining your use case.

You can test the reuse method by following steps:
1) boot into 12.10 DVD
2) Do a full-disk install
3) Boot into installed system and do any changes you want to test.
4) boot into 12.10 DVD and select "Reinstall Ubuntu 12.10" option
5) Boot into installed system and check which desired/undesired changes got preserved or not.

Dmitrijs: I don't agree - those are fine for some limited cases, but they're not a full recipe format extension and that's what we should have.

The bug task for the somerville project has been removed by an automated script. This bug has been cloned on that project and is available here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1306063