Bug#678015: debian-installer: Guided partitioning took 26 hours to complete erasure of encripted LVM volume
Package: debian-installer
Severity: normal
Tags: d-i
I've recently tried the weekly built netinst image of Debian Installer to install Wheezy on
a computer with a hard disk of 640 GB.
I wanted to experiment with encripted volumes, so to get an idea of what could be a sensible
setup, I tried the guided partitioning option for encripted LVM. I just wanted to see what
was Debian's recipe for that setup before coming up with my own.
Unfortunately, the installer decided to erase (very thoroughly I learned too late) all data on
the newly created 632 GB volume it, which took roughly 26 hours.
Had I been asked, I would have chosen no to wipe out the volume, because no sensitive
information was previously there, just the proprietary pre-installed operating system that
I never intended to use, but came with the computer anyway.
Besides, even for sensitive information, a 26 hour-long erasing on an average hardware, with
no prior notice or confirmation is IMHO not what the installer should do.
Please consider:
a) changing the erase algorithm for someting more expeditive, even at the expense of some
effectiveness;
b) asking the user if she actually wants to erase the contents of the newly created volume;
c) warning the user that the erasing could take more than 1 day.
Thank you.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.1
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=es_AR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=es_AR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
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