[Bug 2000874] [NEW] Ubuntu iso defeats the purpose of live media

[Leonard Riggs]

Public bug reported:

The whole purpose of live media is to:
1) Be able to boot into an operating system REGARDLESS of the state of the data on an internal hard drive.
2) Be able to run an alternative operating system WITHOUT making any changes to the existing system.

Casper (or whatever related components of Ubuntu iso) violates both
these purposes.

1) I've had the live DVD unable to boot simply because of minor problems
on my installation on the HDD.  (Took the HDD out of the computer, and
it booted fine -- then I could connect the HDD via a USB adapter to the
running live system.)

2) The live DVD seems to think it owns your system and can just start
making partitions wherever the heck it pleases without asking.  Namely,
"writable", which it seems to use for stuff like log files which I don't
want to keep anyway!  This is the sort of crap we Linux users left
Microsoft years ago to avoid.  You don't own my system, you don't get to
unilaterally decide to scoop up the remaining 2/3 of my 1 TB HDD to use
it for some damn log files.  All this happens before the user is given
any options whatsoever, and the options that do show suggest you can
"try" it before making any changes to your system, which is false.

The log files on "writable" are not useful, and even if they were, you
shouldn't need hundreds of GB for them!

Although it will definitely use it ALL if given half a chance.  Example:
I recently booted a computer with the iso written to a 64-GB usb stick.
Thankfully in that case it made the writable partition fill the
remainder of that stick INSTEAD of screwing with other hard drives (not
that that is acceptable either, just preferable).  But due to some kind
of hardware incompatibility, the entire 64-GB stick became filled with
repetitious error messages in just a few minutes of booting, after which
the system became unstable or unresponsive.  The only way I could get
the live system to "work" was by killing the rsyslogd process as soon as
I could get to a command prompt, and then delete the several GB of crap
that had accumulated in the minute it took to boot.

Maybe you'll say that those log files are important to find out why the live media doesn't boot.  Two things:
A) In the scenario described above (1), the live DVD didn't write any files to the 'writable' partition it made and formatted, because it never made it that far.
B) In testing something before release (e.g. alpha testing), that might be fine to unilaterally write log files, but if it doesn't boot after release, that's not the time to be writing these log files.  Simply fail to boot, and let the user find something else that does boot instead.  Unilaterally adding partitions to users' systems (when they only wanted to try Ubuntu) is unacceptable.

** Affects: casper (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2000874

Title:
  Ubuntu iso defeats the purpose of live media

Status in casper package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  The whole purpose of live media is to:
  1) Be able to boot into an operating system REGARDLESS of the state of the data on an internal hard drive.
  2) Be able to run an alternative operating system WITHOUT making any changes to the existing system.

  Casper (or whatever related components of Ubuntu iso) violates both
  these purposes.

  1) I've had the live DVD unable to boot simply because of minor
  problems on my installation on the HDD.  (Took the HDD out of the
  computer, and it booted fine -- then I could connect the HDD via a USB
  adapter to the running live system.)

  2) The live DVD seems to think it owns your system and can just start
  making partitions wherever the heck it pleases without asking.
  Namely, "writable", which it seems to use for stuff like log files
  which I don't want to keep anyway!  This is the sort of crap we Linux
  users left Microsoft years ago to avoid.  You don't own my system, you
  don't get to unilaterally decide to scoop up the remaining 2/3 of my 1
  TB HDD to use it for some damn log files.  All this happens before the
  user is given any options whatsoever, and the options that do show
  suggest you can "try" it before making any changes to your system,
  which is false.

  The log files on "writable" are not useful, and even if they were, you
  shouldn't need hundreds of GB for them!

  Although it will definitely use it ALL if given half a chance.
  Example:  I recently booted a computer with the iso written to a 64-GB
  usb stick.  Thankfully in that case it made the writable partition
  fill the remainder of that stick INSTEAD of screwing with other hard
  drives (not that that is acceptable either, just preferable).  But due
  to some kind of hardware incompatibility, the entire 64-GB stick
  became filled with repetitious error messages in just a few minutes of
  booting, after which the system became unstable or unresponsive.  The
  only way I could get the live system to "work" was by killing the
  rsyslogd process as soon as I could get to a command prompt, and then
  delete the several GB of crap that had accumulated in the minute it
  took to boot.

  Maybe you'll say that those log files are important to find out why the live media doesn't boot.  Two things:
  A) In the scenario described above (1), the live DVD didn't write any files to the 'writable' partition it made and formatted, because it never made it that far.
  B) In testing something before release (e.g. alpha testing), that might be fine to unilaterally write log files, but if it doesn't boot after release, that's not the time to be writing these log files.  Simply fail to boot, and let the user find something else that does boot instead.  Unilaterally adding partitions to users' systems (when they only wanted to try Ubuntu) is unacceptable.

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