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<p>(cross posting
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/defaulting-to-verify-the-image-integrity-before-installing-on-desktop/13472">https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/defaulting-to-verify-the-image-integrity-before-installing-on-desktop/13472</a>)</p>
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<p>Triaging ubiquity bug reports on launchpad, one of the most
common reason for failing installations is that the image/media
used to do the installation is invalid/corrupted. It shows in
the log with such error<br>
’SQUASHFS error: zlib decompression failed, data probably
corrupt’</p>
<p>There is usually no user friendly explanation of what the
problem is in those cases, which means users just download the
iso/write it/boot the media and follow the steps and at some
point get a random ubiquity error.<br>
One recent example of such report<br>
<a
href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1853769"
class="onebox" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1853769</a><br>
Since we don’t explain the issue nor recommend a solution it’s
often not obvious to user what is going on and what they should
be doing.</p>
<p>In that context, what would people think of making the default
choice on the desktop liveCD to be ‘check & install’ and
make the start of the installer conditional to not having error
on the media?</p>
<p>I’ve tried to get some data for the discussion and tested the
‘check disk’ option on some configurations with an old/slow usb
stick and a recent enough cheap usb3 one</p>
<ul>
<li>a 10 years old latitude with an i5 cpu (bios)</li>
<li>an old/slow inspiron11 (uefi)</li>
<li>a recent XPS13 (uefi)</li>
</ul>
<p>The check takes between 1 minute and a bit less than 3 minutes,
depending of the configuration/media. (I didn’t measure the
installation time then but it’s significantly longer on any of
the machines)</p>
<p>And as an extra data point, I recently booted a fedora 31 ISO
to test a bug and the liveCD menu default to check the media
first there.</p>
<p>I think that the cost is reasonable and that it would avoid an
awkward experience that some of the new Ubuntu users are
getting.</p>
<p>What do others think? Should we default to check the media
before booting the ISO? (And if so do we need to ensure the menu
still provide a way to skip the testing (we should at least for
automaticall installation)?)</p>
<p>Cheers,</p>
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