debian-installers encrypted erase disc cancel button should read Skip

Bug #188085 reported by Dave Morley
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
debian-installer (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: debian-installer

Erasing Disc priory to encrypted LVM takes forever. However the only option on the screen is canel. This can be misleading as it only skips that stage and doesn't cancel the install. I suggest that the button be changed to Skip Erase or something similar to save confusion.

Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

This comment goes for all Cancel buttons at any stage throughout the installation; none of them cancel the install either, only that specific step. If the text is changed, it should be changed for all occurrences. I'm not sure I'm convinced, though.

Changed in debian-installer:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Eerik Wissenz (wissenz) wrote :

Hey

I'm doing a LVM install at the moment and I've often noticed the same thing.

The difference with "Cancel" in this step, as opposed to other steps, is that all the other steps are necessary to complete the install. In this case erasing the disk can be canceled and the installation continues as usual (whereas the user may already be conditioned to assume canceling will just bring you back to this step if you want to continue).

Of course canceling means:
1. Any information that's on the partition may persist as long, since it'll only be erased by the new system overwriting it.
2. Erasing actually means filling up the disk with random bits, which means that if you don't erase analysis of the disk will give an attacker information like how much information is on the partition. It may even aid in decrypting the disk somehow (I don't know how it could, and even if no one alive knows either ... it still doesn't mean someone in the future may figure out some clever way inconceivable to us now.)

However, erasing a 100+ GB hdd takes a really long time, time you may not have since you have to get work done on box.

Proposals:
So, I think this could simply be explained under the "Erase" operation, as people who this affects will certainly read any text as they wait for the erase to crawl along. So at the end of this explanation you can simply note "cancel at your own risk".

But a clever feature would be the option before erasing to "skip erase during install, but to erase in the background later while the system is being used". I.e. using "secure-delete".

Of course, it doesn't need to be automatic. The text explanation can just give the options for wiping free space pose install such as secure-delete. We are talking encrypted LVM so I don't think newbie proofing is necessary and anyone at this step is obviously concerned about security and is unlikely to forget to post-install wipe if they want to.

Anyways, always a pleasure to install Debian. Great work everyone!

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