User interface exception request: Ask the user if they wish to activate dmraid arrays.

[Myers]

I wanted to install the 8.10 beta with the alternative install CD.
I'm using a Asus P5B as my motherboard and have two (SATA) HDDs. All "hardware" RAID options in my BIOS are turned off.
I was not able to install Ubuntu on only one HDD with the text installer. Also I was not able to setup a software RAID-1 with mdadm during the installtion. The options to setup a software RAID appeared but I was not able to setup a RAID-1 with mdadm as it was possible in earlier releases.
The setup detects my 2 HDDs as one drive. This, I think, is because dmraid merges the 2 HDDs to one "virtual" drive.
I can't see any option to deactivate dmraid.

I see a big problem here when installing Ubuntu to a system with 2 HDDs. The content of both disk will be deleted even if you want to make changes to only one disk.

Rationale for user exception freeze:
As indicated above, the user, dispite having all RAID options turned off in their BIOS, has remnants of a dmraid configuration left on their hard drive, which they don't want to use. It is wrong to force users to use such a configuratino when they don't want to do so, especially if the BIOS, dispite having RAID options disabled, is badly designed enough to leave the metadata for the configuration lying around.

The attached debdiffs for partman-base and hw-detect implement this question. The actual UI change is in hw-detect/disk-detect. The change in partman-base is needed to ensure that if the user says no to using the dmraid arrays, the disk drives show up as normal.

Ubuntu-doc thread: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2008-October/011826.html
Ubuntu-translators thread: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-translators/2008-October/001712.html

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Bumping to high since this is a regression from hardy.

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

 affects ubuntu/partman-base
 assignee themuso
 status inprogress

 affects ubuntu/hw-detect
 status inprogress

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

 affects ubuntu/partman-base
 assignee <email address hidden>
 status inprogress

 affects ubuntu/hw-detect
 status inprogress

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

 affects ubuntu/partman-base
 status inprogress

 affects ubuntu/hw-detect
 status inprogress

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

Debdiffs for partman-base and hw-detect.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Acked, thanks for asking doc team in advance!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package partman-base - 121ubuntu8

---------------
partman-base (121ubuntu8) intrepid; urgency=low

  * init.d/parted: Don't skip over dmraid devices if the user chooses not to
    activate them. (LP: #279288)

 -- Luke Yelavich <email address hidden> Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:36:24 +1100

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package hw-detect - 1.63ubuntu4

---------------
hw-detect (1.63ubuntu4) intrepid; urgency=low

  * disk-detect.sh, debian/disk-detect.templates: If dmraid arrays are found,
    ask the user if they want to use them. (LP: #279288)

 -- Luke Yelavich <email address hidden> Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:41:15 +1100