Re: Skipping disk erase on Debian text-based installation (fwd)
Hi Nick,
Nick Gawronski <nick@nickgawronski.com> wrote (Sun, 1 May 2022 17:19:48 -0500):
> Hi, I am totally blind and use the s option at boot to start the
> installer with speech output. If I wish to add this kernel command line
> option yet still run the installation using software speech output would
> pressing s then tab and then entering in the command line switches then
> pressing enter work as control and c does not do the canceling operation
> like it should and I had to wait until the entire disk was wiped?
yes, typing in the commandline switch should work as you described.
But be aware, that the installer uses a qwerty (english) keyboard layout
in that stage. That might be tricky, if you use another layout usually
(especially because you need to type some special symbols as well, not only
alphabetical characters).
And I have tested it, it works as described, the full disk wipe is skipped
automatically then.
Another comment:
Nick is right, if you perform an install with speech output, there is no
interactive possibility to cancel the full disk wipe action in the text
frontend used for speech!
In the newt frontend or graphical installer there is the Cancel button,
but not in the text frontend, sadly.
Regards
Holger
>
> On 5/1/2022 5:54 AM, Philip Hands wrote:
> > Nick Gawronski <nick@nickgawronski.com> writes:
> >
> >> Hi, I had to reinstall debian and like to encrypt my installations.
> >> Regardless of what installation image I use I find that no choice exists
> >> to not do the complete wiping of the disk before the LVM manager is
> >> setup. I get that it will be possible to press control and c to stop
> >> the process but having an option like a choice in the last step asking
> >> if you wish to do this complete wipe would be better. If the system was
> >> already encrypted and all you were doing was doing a reinstallation then
> >> going threw that process again to me is pointless. Is this
> >> something that could possibly be looked at for a future release? Nick
> >> Gawronski
> > If you're doing an interactive install, the expectation is that you
> > cancel it if you don't want to wait for it, since that seems the way to
> > ensure that people that don't know what they're doing still get a safe
> > result.
> >
> > It's been possible to override this via preseeding (since 2017[1]),
> > either in a preseed.cfg, thus:
> >
> > d-i partman-auto-crypto/erase_disks boolean false
> >
> > or on the kernel command line:
> >
> > partman-auto-crypto/erase_disks=false
> >
> > which you could do in an otherwise interactive install, if that's what
> > you wanted.
> >
> > For more such preseeding hints, check out the example preseed.cfg:
> >
> > https://d-i.debian.org/manual/example-preseed.txt
> >
> > which is linked to from here:
> >
> > https://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.amd64/apbs02.html
> >
> > HTH
> >
> > Cheers, Phil.
> >
> > [1] https://bugs.debian.org/476388
>
--
Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org>
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