04 October 12.53 local time EU-Adam with logging enabled.
doing an upgrade from 3.8.13 to 3.8.17
Lenovo X1 carbon 3rd gen with a single encrypted ssd.
On install start it asks for partitioning and asks for an efi partition and then the partitions are shown.
Given that the machine was fine before, that is what I would call a very unclear message. No ordinary person should have to worry about stuff like that.
The upgrader should simply follow the existing setup without confusing messages like that.
If at all it should ask (beforehand?) if the existing setup was to my liking yes/no and proceed on that premise.
I'm a fairly seasoned Elive installer/upgrader but even I was thrown aback by the question and not even sure what exactly was needed of me.
So in a reflex opted for the 7Mb Bios/boot partition which (I shoud've thought of that) is the legacy boot option (the installer stumbled over) and subsequently hosed it as well as the efi setup in the process ..... thus making the machine non-bootable.
Booting with a GrubRescueDisk works to get the system up and running ..... but reinstalling the uefi/mbr options isn't as straight-forward as doing `"sudo grub-install /dev/sda", alas.
I tried all kinds of tricks until I was sure to have thoroughly hosed all my boot options.
In the process I did discover a few cool tricks to get rid of old cruft in the bootloader using "efibootmgr".
Ultimately, I backed up my $HOME and did a clean install which by itself isn't a bad thing as i do tend to try out a lot of stuff, leaving all sorts of cruft lying around.
So pointer being: Ask the person upgrading if a change is wanted and if not: Leave well enough alone.
hum, I assume it should be the case, unless the installer doens't detect the previous EFI partition (it should), OR unless there was not an EFI partition and thus needing it (thats why the installer should be forced to ask to the user for one) - can you confirm 3.8.13 had an EFI partition?
to solve this (if the bug stills here), I would need to setup a virtual machine reproducing the same scenario and finding why it asks while should simply re-use it, and also improving the installer to verify the needed things as you suggested to confirm the upgrade (lots of betatestings), but first, can you confirm the bug stills here? (i assume it can be reproduced upgrading the same last-beta-version, doing tests)
note: the installer simply proceeds making everything upgraded and following the needs over the process (when things are needed), thats why you experienced this "oh wait!" thing
UPDATE: ok there's the issue (an user issue lol, but i don't know how the installer can improve this... so this was your case:
you had previously an install, using legacy boot
you switched your bios to uefi
you boot Elive from USB to install (upgrade) it
the installer saw that you are in UEFI mode and then needing an UEFI partition, but you didn't had it, because your previous install (and bios configured as) was in legacy mode
so in this situation you selected the 7MB BIOS partition that was used for the legacy mode, but the installation of things into this EFI partition failed, because 7 MB is very probably not enough (they are used to be 250mb for efi by default)
yeah is not so easy, maybe you saw something about not enough space, not sure... the best for such scenario (only for state it here about this situation) could be to:
resize your partitions to give more space to that old BIOS partition (now EFI partition), lets say 250mb
boot again the Live mode and proceed with a new upgrade mode, since the new resized partition has enough space, the install should proceed correctly
I have noted all the details for reproduce the scenario and improve the installer with your suggestions, but my TODOS are so huge (especially with the recent massive problems with emails and spambots in the website) that I don't know when i will have time to work on the installer
(lots of betatestings), but first, can you confirm the bug stills here? (i assume it can be reproduced upgrading the same last-beta-version, doing tests)
(an user issue lol, but i don't know how the installer can improve this... so this was your case: