On Thu, 2026-07-23 at 08:38 +0200, Pascal Hambourg wrote: > On 19/07/2026 at 21:04, Kevin Locke wrote: >> I can confirm that the ISO from Salsa CI does not produce the >> "Partition(s) 1 on /dev/sda have been written, but [...]" error >> message. However, it does still overwrite the USB stick. Is that >> expected? > > Yes. The netboot installer included in mini.iso images does not mount a > local installation media, it loads everything from a network mirror. To > simulate the cdrom installer included in netinst and DVD images, you need to > mount the installation media by hand.
Thanks for mentioning that it's a netboot image. So netboot media will still be affected after the fix is merged? It would be nice to avoid inadvertently overwriting installation media for netboot too, although it is probably a less significant issue. What do you think? > Note: when a isohybrid image is written to a USB drive /dev/sdX, the cdrom > installer mounts the partition /dev/sdX1 instead of the entire device > /dev/sdX (because it scans USB partitions before entire disks, do not ask me > why). So you also need to test with a mounted partition. Good thought. I just tested and can confirm that I observe the same behavior with /dev/sda1 mounted at /cdrom (the "Partition disks" step no longer has Guided or Manual options and no disks are shown, when a second disk is added only it is shown). >> One other idea we haven't discussed, which might be helpful to >> distinguish the use cases you outlined from missing disks, would be to >> prompt the user to modify the installer media. For example: > > I also had this idea as a last resort. > >> "No disks were detected other than the one containing this installer. >> Installing to this disk will modify the installer media. Continue?" > > Prompting only when there is no other disk would break the use case where > there is another disk and the user still wants to install on the disk > containing installation media. IMO it should not matter whether there are > other disks or not. Good point. Perhaps we could cover this case with a more general message? Maybe something like: "Installing to this disk will modify the installation media. <Continue> <Go Back>" What do you think? Cheers, Kevin
