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Bug#217503: marked as done (Evil autopartkit should _NEVER_ _NEVER_ try to overwrite an unknown partition table)

Your message dated Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:47:12 -0700
with message-id <E1GF8FM-00053S-9k@spohr.debian.org>
and subject line Bug#217503: fixed in autopartkit 1.18
has caused the attached Bug report to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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Debian bug tracking system administrator
(administrator, Debian Bugs database)
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: autopartkit
Version: 0.62
Severity: critical
Justification: causes serious data loss

Ok, i am trying to make debian-installer work on the pegasos, and to my
surprise, yesterday, autopartkit without really giving me the choice
(but then, i might have missed something with the garbled console i
got), just proceeded to overwrite my partition table and something
started to format a partition. So no more powerpc kernel work, no more
parted patches, no more changes to debian-installer. No more anything i
had on that disk, which was not even the disk i was doing the
installation tests on.

This should never never never happen like that, and the whole partition
and disk touching thingy is utterly broken as is.

It is also not only pegasos related, but will break on m68k/amiga as
well as ppc/amiga, as well as all the not yet supported by libparted
partition schemes.

I see two solutions to this :

  1) an NMU of libparted including my amiga patches, which are sitting
  in the BTS since almost a month now. This is only a partial solution
  though, as we would need to add at least probing code for _every_
  partition scheme around (not all that difficult to do). An upload of a
  new libparted may mean a recompilation of all the libparted using
  binaries, not sure though, it should not happen, as i don't modify the
  external representation, but ...

  2) Some more rationale chosing of partitioning scheme based on
  arch/subarch detection. I notice that partitioner was first tried and
  failed, and then it got on to propose to mount partitions and such,
  and then it went on to autopartkit. This is broken. One thing that can
  be checked is, that despite libparted not recognizing the partition
  table type, the kernel _DOES_ know about it, so it should detect it
  and warn the user about this in big flashing letters. And something
  more flashy than the usual "Are you sure you want to erase this disk"
  thingy, since we _know_ that autopartkit is going to write over the
  existing partition table.

As i see it, the ideal way of handling this would be a coordinated
effort of the different partitioning/formating tools available, which
somehow shows the limits of the modular system.

Ideally, we should have :

  We have a disk. It is either partitioned or not, we parse the
  /proc/partitions to see what the kernel thinks about it. We would need
  to load the partition table modules for this though.

  We do a libparted probe on the disk, to see if the partition table is
  recognized. If it is, then we can propose the user to choose either
  partitioner, autopartkit or parted. Ideally we should have some
  heuristic (arch/subarch related) for proposing also other tools. This
  should be one menu entry only, which would have something like
  submenus. I don't know if this is possible with the modular
  debian-installer, but until this is done, i don't consider
  debian-installer as releaseable, so if it not possible, we better work
  on it. If the kernel discovered a partition table on the disk, we also
  automatically propose to not change anything, and go on with it.

  If the kernel detects a partition table on the disk, but neither
  libparted nor the standalone partitioning tool is able to detect it,
  then we have a huge flashing warning about the fact. And something
  which should _not_ be comparable to the normal "are you sure" question
  currently used.

  Once one of the tools is choosen (or not) and the disk is partitioned,
  we go on with the filesystem creation stuff as usual.

Like said, this is a critical bug report. In the current status
debian-installer is totally unreleasable, and this should be fixed.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

-- System Information: (NOTE, the above is irrelevant information, since
this is naturally not the box where i lost my disk on).
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux iliana 2.4.22 #1 SMP dim oct 12 10:52:56 CEST 2003 i686
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.ISO-8859-1, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.ISO-8859-1

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Source: autopartkit
Source-Version: 1.18

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
autopartkit, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive:

autopartkit_1.18.dsc
  to pool/main/a/autopartkit/autopartkit_1.18.dsc
autopartkit_1.18.tar.gz
  to pool/main/a/autopartkit/autopartkit_1.18.tar.gz
autopartkit_1.18_i386.udeb
  to pool/main/a/autopartkit/autopartkit_1.18_i386.udeb



A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 217503@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@debian.org> (supplier of updated autopartkit package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Format: 1.7
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 13:26:41 +0200
Source: autopartkit
Binary: autopartkit
Architecture: source i386
Version: 1.18
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: low
Maintainer: Debian Install System Team <debian-boot@lists.debian.org>
Changed-By: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@debian.org>
Description: 
 autopartkit - Automatically Partition Hard Drives (unsafe) (udeb)
Closes: 217503 247590 358834 374874
Changes: 
 autopartkit (1.18) unstable; urgency=low
 .
   * Add more log output.
   * Rewrite to make sure all places using ped_device_get_next() uses
     my_ped_device_get_next_rw() instead, to avoid CD-ROMs and
     read-only devices.  (Closes: #374874)
   * Add some sleeps around the code to give the kernel time to create
     the needed device files.
   * Fix typo in postinst.  Make sure to modprobe the required modules,
     not call their name as if they are programs.
   * Autopartkit always ask before erasing hard drives. (Closes: #217503)
   * Now work with udev.  (Closes: #358834)
   * Only modprobe kernel modules if they are not loaded already. Based
     on patch from Sylvain Ferriol. (Closes: #247590)
Files: 
 5b5d72427de6f5045ac5c14871c1847e 716 debian-installer optional autopartkit_1.18.dsc
 a57229e153a87a40303fa952e965368d 237721 debian-installer optional autopartkit_1.18.tar.gz
 427c9eeba48eafb1c98127ed8920be13 103346 debian-installer optional autopartkit_1.18_i386.udeb
Package-Type: udeb

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--- End Message ---
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