heavy handed installer file deletion
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
partman-target (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Evan | ||
Karmic |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Evan |
Bug Description
When Installing Ubuntu Karmic Kola onto an existing file system, the installler deletes files it has no business messing with.
When a user chooses to install to an existing partition without reformating, it is assumed that they are trying to preserve the information on that file system. While it may be acceptable to delete files are trees that are only supposed to contain system files, it is unacceptable to delete things willy nilly.
recently I had my running Karmic Kola become unbootable after an update. I tolerated this as part of participating in the testing process. I downloaded a Karmic Alpha 5 CD to do an install overtop of the existing system as the quickest means of recovery. After backing up trees that contained critical information that I accepted that the fresh install might overwrite, such as /etc and /home I proceeded with the CD install.
After completing the install I discovered that the /usr/src and /usr/local/bin directories had been obliterated.
This is absolutely intolerable. This is a violation of the first do no harm principle. I can not conceive of any reason that installing linux requires or would benefit from wiping out these directory trees.
affects: | ubuntu → ubiquity (Ubuntu) |
Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu): | |
importance: | Undecided → High |
status: | New → Confirmed |
We should investigate using the Contents file to create a list of directories to hard code in clear_partitions for explicit deletion. The fallback plan is to continue whitelisting, adding /usr/src, /var/local, and /usr/local to the list.
(09:40:53 PM) cjwatson: maybe it would be worth going through the Contents file and looking for directories in which we actually ship files, and nuking those
(09:41:07 PM) cjwatson: though the cross-compiler directories would be inconvenient
(09:44:44 PM) evand: I'm afraid of doing explicit deletion as if we ever ship a new directory and forget to upload clear_partitions, bad things happen
(09:44:52 PM) evand: err, well, can happen
(09:56:51 PM) cjwatson: bad things either way though
(09:57:07 PM) cjwatson: dunno - FHS directories except src are probably safe, at least