Unable to skip or abort integrity check before Life Server Install

[Sebastian Kraus]

Using the Ubuntu 20.04 Live Server Install ISO-Image, I am unable to prevent casper from checking the media for integrity. This is a issue, because I need to install Ubuntu Servers via Supermicro IPMI over the network and don't have reliable keyboard maps in this environment.

First issue is, that if I mount the ISO via IPMI virtual media and it comes to integrity check, the entire ISO has to be transferred via the network, not only the necessary parts of it. It takes about 30 minutes via a one Gigabit network to pass the integrity check, as the JAVA KVM application is ... suboptimal in terms of performance. Thats not the point. I would greatly appreciate in a SERVER ISO to cancel the integrity check with CTRL+C. This does not work.

I am aware that the Integrity check can be skipped using Kernel boot parameters. This is not suitable for me, as using the KVM application, the keyboard mapping is entirely broken and I am unable to cast a "=" sign.

Therefore, the integrity check cannot be skipped and cannot be interruped in my environment. For every Setup of a server, I have to wait 30 minutes for the media being checked.

I would expect to get a "F6: Advanced Options" menu entry to select the fsck.mode=skip option without having to type it. Alternativeley I would expect casper to honor a CTRL+C during integrity check, which it doesn't. I can't understand, why this process cannot be aborted.

Thank you very much,
Sebastian Kraus

[Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)]

This is fixed differently in hirsute and up and should not be an issue there (slow virtual ISO performance is always going to be a problem for the install part as a good fraction of the ISO ends up being copied to the target system, but well, that happens later). I guess we need to decide if this work should be backported to focal in time for the 20.04.3 release.