Comment 8 for bug 191119

I forgot to mention in my first post that once the problem shows itself, it persists indefinitely across attempts to install Ubuntu. The way I was able to fix the problem at that point was to physically zero out the defunct file system on the disk. This should be obvious, but I'll say it anyway: if zeroing out the defunct file system fixes the problem, then it stands to reason that the cause of the problem is the presence of the defunct file system. In other words, the installer is detecting the defunct file system and screwing up as a result.