08 P<P0QQP0 2012, 14:22 P>Q "Dmitrij D. Czarkoff" <czark...@gmail.com>: > On Wed, 2012-03-07 at 16:23 +0000, Dennis den Brok wrote: > > > > "Use (W)hole disk (writes to disk immediately) or (E)dit the MBR? [whole]" > > > > While the FAQ is indeed clear, the installer's simplicity appears > > at that point a little deceptive, in that one (I know I was) is > > tempted to think that such a user-friendly installer would not harm > > one so easily... > > Don't you think it all gets too far? One should generally expect that > choosing "use the whole disk" means that all the data on disk will be > lost. If the user doesn't pay attention to installer, this wording won't > help. Furthermore, the more chatty installer is, the less amount of > newcomers would be reading the messages.
my sentiments exactly. if they don't think about what's written, will it make it better to write some more? besides, what does exactly "writes to disk immediately" mean? ok, it writes, so what? will it change MBR? will it change something else? or will it just read sector and write it back (i.e. no actual change)? may be the install script may be changed so that it does dd if=/dev/sdXc of=/tmp/sdXc.mbr count=1 so that after chosing the "whole disk" option and breaking the install script, you still have an option to get your partition table back. it needs to be documented of course...
