CD integrity checking (Re: Colony 3, Test report)

HC Brugmans hcbrugmans at gmail.com
Sun Aug 28 14:22:50 CDT 2005


Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2005 at 01:57:15PM -0400, Alvin Thompson wrote:
<snip>
> 
>>all right, you obviously aren't willing to be convinced so i'll drop it.
>>i will point out that you could probably detect 90% of bad CDs in 1/10 of
>>the time of a systematic scan by checking only the likely 'hotspots'
>>(padding, etc). and the perceived user experience of a bad install is
>>extremely negative, even though it's technically not the distro's fault.
> 
> 
> I have tried to explain to you, with specific technical examples, why I
> don't think your proposal is the best way to solve the problem.  If I didn't
> think the subject was worth discussing, I wouldn't waste my time writing
> email about it.
> 
> Things that I am not willing to do:
> 
> - Add a new, mandatory 8-20+ minute step to the start of the installation
> 
> - Engineer an overcomplicated parallel processing solution (and associated
>   UI) to try to do an integrity check at the same time that the installer is
>   running (which I don't think would work very well anyway)
> 
> If you have an idea for a check which takes 10% of the time while achieving
> 90% of the results, I would be very interested to hear concrete, verifiable
> details about it.
> 

I install ubuntu/debian fairly regularly, read docs, mailing lists etc.
I've never come across an option to verify the integrity of the disc in 
the menu/installer. If it is there as this thread says it is, I've 
managed to overlook it at least 10 times.

I've had multiple misburns messing up installs, so if I had known, I 
would have used it every time.
So please, do at the the very least make it more obvious, allow the user 
to type 'check' in the prompt just like you type 'server' for a basic 
install or perhaps ask the user to verify the cd on default install (and 
warn about the time this would take)



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