Bug#559796: debian-installer: doesn't recognize manual changes to disk contents

[Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>]

reassign 559796 partman-base
severity 559796 wishlist
thanks

> I noticed inside the partitioner that I couldn't create a /boot ext3
> with extra-small journal.

Personally I just use ext2 for /boot.

> So I did that manually instead. But I couldn't 
> figure out any way to make the installer recognize that there was a
> filesystem on that partition now, so that I could have selected for it
> to not be formatted again, without rebooting the installer.

So exiting to the menu and restarting partman did not work?

It's possible that file system detection is only executed the first time 
partman in started.

IIRC there is a flag /var/lib/partman/filesystems_detected (or something 
close to that). Possibly deleting that before restarting partman would do 
what you want. Could you verify that?

> Given that the installer can't implement every configuration option one
> could possibly think of, I think it would be nice if the manual fallback
> would work without too much trouble.

I see your point, but the challenge is to implement it in a way that does 
not confuse the hell out of users.