usb-creator operates on mounted filesystems, does not display confirmation dialogs, issue warnings about data loss
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
usb-creator (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: usb-creator
I think the summary is relatively self-explanatory.
I was attempting to create an installer on a USB flash drive with on a Karmic machine with several pieces of USB media attached, including (apparently unwisely) my backup drive, where I was busily moving data I didn't want to lose when I reinstalled the machine from scratch.
I picked the wrong /dev/sd?, got no warnings, and am now trying to recover the disk from a backup superblock.
usb-creator-gtk needs to make some major usability changes:
* Stop listing /dev/sd[a-z][1-9] devices alongside /dev/sd[a-z] ones. It's a single piece of media, for most purposes. Pick one.
* Identify the devices as best as possible. If Nautilus can show spiffy SD and CF and generic disk icons, so can usb-creator-gtk.
* At an absolute minimum, displaying the current volume label (if there is one) would be enormously helpful.
* Issue at least one generic warning before performing any destructive operations.
* Issue a second warning for ext[2-4] and other Linux filesystems. Possibly a second warning for any non-WinDOS filesystems.
* Either refuse to operate on a mounted filesystem, or warn that it's mounted, and offer to unmount it.
* Stop bypassing back-end tools' refusal to operate on mounted filesystems until usb-creator-gtk has its own set.
mkdosfs (I'm guessing that was what was in operation) has completely gutted the drive. There's nothing left whatever. I did actually have some important information in there, including passwords and package tracking numbers and things.
Changed in usb-creator (Ubuntu): | |
status: | New → Confirmed |
I fully agree. Especially that former versions of usb-creator didn't show all these additional entries, only a pendrive partition. Now I see not only a pendrive /dev/sdc1 (which it did in past versions) and even not only my external HDD /dev/sdb1-6, but also /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc. It says nothing to a user and choosing /dev/sdb would - as I read - make all my data from 1 TB disk incaccessible (yeah, I can try to recover them, but...).
I actually think this is of critical importance. Partition-related issues should be reviewed much closer than other bugs. And the final version of Ubuntu definitely shouldn't be shipped with USB Disk Startup Creator in a state it is now.
Besides, for most of my entries there are yellow triangles, sth like a warning - it seems an app can actually tell apart a desired pendrive partition (the only one not triangle-marked - see attached screenshot) from others, it should just go one step further.