Comment 25 for bug 106209

Yep, I'd call it an installer bug, especially if Ubuntu is actively encouraging users to do install multiple systems.

Either the installer should be less "greedy" about installing filesystems into its fstab, or the installer should #1, ask the user if they are sure about reformatting a filesystem, and #2, ask the user whether they want to keep the UUID (in which case it should save the original UUID, and then restore it via tune2fs after running mke2fs), or #3, if the user answered no to #2, search all other filesystems if they have an fstab file referencing that UUID, and ask the user if they would like to remove or modify the line in the other filesystem's fstab file.

Note that no other distribution has had this problem, probably because they as aggressively using UUID's in /etc/fstab, and they aren't encouraging users to install alternative boot filesystems on their system for successive beta releases (and hence causing those filesystems to be reformatted). For example, most Debian testers just use "apt-get dist-upgrade", and so they won't run into this particular problem. I suspect that Ubuntu is also reaching out to more novice users, who don't automatically consider the need to modify /etc/fstab or to omit unneeded filesystems in /etc/fstab in the first place.