Package: install Version: beta-1 Severity: critical Justification: causes serious data loss
Well, this report is perhaps alarmist, but it is true. I was testing whether the installer could be booted manually from the CD on powerpc. I managed to boot it from an HFS partition, where I had placed files from the CD. Once I got the installer booted, I thought I would mount the HFS partition and try removing some of the files from it which I thought were not used, to re-test booting with them removed. Rather than using console 2, I saw the 'Configure and mount partitions' menu item, and chose it (partconf). I selected the hard disk partition I wanted to mount, and told the installer to leave the existing filesystem alone, and mount it on root (the default selection). Well, then I selected Finish, knowing the partition would not really be mounted until I did so. But unfortunately you can imagine what happened next. The installer took off, having its partconf dependency satisfied, and debootstrap started installing debs. I was a little amused, I figured 'OK, I'll have a bunch of unix files on my Mac partition'. it eventually got an error, d-i segfaulted and started respawning, 6000 process numbers used by the time I saw it on console 3, and the shell was almost unusable due to the cpu activity. I did get it rebooted from console 2 eventually. Mounting the disk in MacOS, I see no Unix files. However as I started looking at the Mac files that were there, I realized they had been corrupted. Applications gave error messages when I tried to use them. The file's contents had been overwritten by the debs from debootstrap, using ext2 filesystem semantics I suppose, leaving the HFS desktop file intact but overwriting the files themselves. So this entire partition's contents are trash. I have no idea what might be good or bad. Say, it's a good thing I haven't used MacOS in a long time. But I did have many valuable items there. This disaster could be prevented by refusing to install on an HFS filesystem, or partconf could refuse to mount such filesystems at the standard unix mount points. I think it just points out the kind of dangers we face when we take something that's been manual in the past and automate it. I was still interpreting the Configure and mount partitions step to be like it was in boot-floppies; it would do that and nothing else. Now, it does much more and resulted in the loss of my data. I'm also going to add something in the powerpc boot.msg telling how to set the debconf priority for 'manual mode'. If the priority had been set to medium, I assume the menu would work one step at a time as it did in boot-floppies. -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable Architecture: powerpc Kernel: Linux iMacBlue.cox.net 2.4.22-powerpc #1 Sat Sep 27 04:08:08 CEST 2003 ppc Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C -- Debian GNU/Linux Operating System By the People, For the People Chris Tillman (a people instance) toff one at cox dot net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
