Brainstorm review: Warn users about attached external drives before installing Ubuntu

Sat Dec 29 21:55:30 UTC 2012

Dear Technical Board,

I have been requested below, to respond to the brainstorm idea
"Warn users about external drives that are mounted before installing Ubuntu"
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29984/

Indeed, having less hard-drives attached during installations (ideally
only 1) makes the installation process easier and more robust. On the
other hand, we still want to continue supporting multiple target
devices. During 12.10, improvements were made in detecting external
USB drives in the installer. Unfortunately, that also reviled that
some USB sticks & drives mis-report themselves as other connection
types (e.g. SCSI). This makes Solution #2/#3 very hard. We no longer
have migration assistant in the installer, thus there is no benefit in
having unnecessary devices plugged in. I like "Solution #1: Display a
warning message". It can be shown in a non-intrusive way, as needed
(when extra drives are plugged in), at the prepare step or maybe at
some other screen.

For this purpose I have filed bug #1094557 to track design and implementation.

Regards,

Dmitrijs.

On 12 December 2012 18:32, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hello Dmitrijs,
>
> Once you've read the details below, please respond with an
> acknowledgement and let me know if you can participate.  The expected
> time investment should be about an hour over the next two weeks.
>
> The Ubuntu Technical Board has a regular program to respond to top voted
> topics on Ubuntu Brainstorm:
>
>   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TechnicalBoard/BrainstormReview
>
> The current review cycle is being tracked at
>
>   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TechnicalBoard/BrainstormReview/Dec2012
>
> Our goal is to improve our responsiveness to the questions, concerns
> and suggestions we receive from the user community.  Note that this
> does NOT mean that we will commit to following the suggestions, but we
> will evaluate and respond to them.  By explaining what we will (or
> won't) do and why, we will show that we are paying attention and
> trying to make good decisions on behalf of our users.
>
> The way the program works is that the Technical Board identifies
> people within the Ubuntu project who are knowledgeable in the specific
> topics proposed in Brainstorm, and asks each of them to write a short
> response to one topic.
>
> One of the most popular topics in brainstorm at present is about
> preventing accidental installation of Ubuntu onto an attached USB
> drive:
>
>   http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29984/
>
> Since you are well versed in this area, we would appreciate if you could
> spend a short time reading the Brainstorm content about it and writing a
> few paragraphs.  You don't need to have all the answers, and I encourage
> you to ask for input from others who might have a view on the issue.
> This can be in the form of a detailed upstream bug report, a blog post,
> an email, or any other suitable format.  It shouldn't take more than an
> hour or two to complete.
>
> Our goal is to have everything ready for publication by mid-January
> 2013. Can you confirm that you're willing and able to help with this?
>
> You can formulate your response as you see fit, but make sure that the
> tone is sympathetic.  Many of the comments in Brainstorm take the form
> of demands or complaints: just treat these as if they were questions,
> and answer them politely.  Try to listen to the *need* behind the
> suggestion, not just the suggestion itself, and connect with your
> audience by telling a story about it.
>
> Here are some example formulas which might be helpful to you:
>
>  * "It sounds like the problem described here is X.  We address that in
>    Ubuntu today by doing A, B and C.  Maybe that's not working for
>    everyone because of Y.  We could improve this by doing Z."
>
>  * "I would love to see a new feature like that in Ubuntu.  It's
>    consistent with the way other parts of Ubuntu work, and seems
>    genuinely useful.  We're busy with some higher priority projects at
>    the moment like X, but if someone is interested in writing a patch
>    for this, I will help them get it into Ubuntu and upstream."
>
>  * "This is a really hard problem without an easy solution.  It's
>    complex because of X, Y and Z.  It will take some time for this to be
>    completely solved, but here are a few projects we're working on which
>    will make things better, bit by bit."
>
>  * "That's an easy fix.  I've written a patch and uploaded it to
>    Oneiric.  It will be in the 11.10 release!"
>
>  * "That's a great idea, and we already thought of it!  Here's the
>    blueprint, and here's how you can follow along as this gets
>    implemented in Natty."
>
>  * "I passed on your suggestion to the upstream developer of the
>    software, and we had a conversation about it.  Here's what we
>    decided."
>
>  * "This seems like a genuine problem, but I'm not sure that's the right
>    solution, because of X and Y.  I asked our usability expert Jill
>    about this, and here's what she suggested."
>
>  * "I didn't understand what the problem was here, so I had a
>    conversation on IRC with Jamie, who submitted this topic to
>    Brainstorm to understand better.  Here's how it went:
>
>    [...]
>
>    In the end, we both decided that the best course of action is X."
>
> If you have any further questions about what is expected here, please
> let me know.
>
> Thank you in advance!
>
> Martin Pitt
> pp. Ubuntu Technical Board
> --
> Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
> Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)