Wubi installer does not resume download if network becomes disconnected

[Andrew Perry]

This bug is based on my experience a week ago while helping someone install Ubuntu via Wubi over an unreliable slow internet connection (3 hour+ download).

Observed behavior:

If the network becomes disconnected while the Wubi installer is downloading the system image, a dialog is shown telling the user an error has occurred and that the disk images couldn't be retrieved. The Wubi installer then exits.

Upon re-launching the installer, Wubi detects a previous installation and launches the uninstaller, before re-launching the installer. The partially downloaded disk images are deleted and the install starts from scratch.

Expected / desired behavior:

If the network disconnects part way through downloading the disk image, the Wubi installer should:

1) prompt the user with a dialog that the download stopped due to a network error, with a "Retry" and "Cancel" button. Pressing Retry would attempt to continue the download. This would allow the download to be immediately resumed by the user if the network disconnected for only a few seconds.

b) upon relaunching the installer after a failed disk image download, the installer should automatically attempt to resume the download and continue installation as normal. If the network is still disconnected and the download cannot currently be resumed, the user should be given the option to Retry the failed download (which would resume the download from the partial file), or Uninstall (which would launch the uninstaller).

I've attached a Wubi log of going through the process of a failed download and subsequent relauching for Wubi, although I don't think it's all that useful given that this is more of a usability bug.

[Santanu Chakrabarti (santanu-chakrabarti-0)]

Hi,

I also found the same behavior while installing ubuntu through wubi. In India net connections are very unreliable. I wasted my three days due to this problem and am still trying. I am trying to install Ubuntu 11.10.

Is there any other way to download an image using any download manager and use it with wubi?

Thanks and regards
Santanu

[Andrew Perry (ajperry)]

I started a quick attempt at implementing download resuming ~8 months ago, shortly after posting this bug, however I had seen news that Wubi was being discontinued so I stopped working on it.

It looks like Wubi lives on (maybe it's just not being put on the release DVDs ?) - so I've linked my current work as a related branch lp:~ajperry/wubi/resume . This is incomplete (still needs some additional UI), but it seems to work and will resume from a stopped download.