[Bug 1351267] Re: partman-auto prefers to give disk to swap, leaving root too small

[Dimitri John Ledkov]

The patch proposed is good, but is incomplete. Our default recipe, takes
between 100% and 200% of ram, with a default suggestion of 512M. However
only the min boundary is updated, but not the max one.

Imho, instead of capping min/max calculations, they should be left as
is. Instead, we should cap as to what we consider to be 100%, aka cap
the RAM calculation to 1GB, to thus have swap file between total RAM and
2GB, with no more than 2GB.

And imho it should be a question if we cap the RAM or not, with an
option to pressed unlimited. Will implement this shortly, based on the
partman-swapfile code.

And thus 20G disk / 30000M RAM -> should work and install correctly.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1351267

Title:
  partman-auto prefers to give disk to swap, leaving root too small

Status in partman-auto package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in partman-auto source package in Xenial:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  I was trying to install Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS on an Oracle VirtualBox VM
  with 6.5GB of RAM and 8GB (default for a new Virtual HDD on
  VirtualBox) of disk space.

  I selected the option "Erase disk and install Ubuntu" (and post crash
  "Erase Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS and reinstall") and let it use the defaults.

  The installer gives the error:

   "Some of the partitions you created are too small. Please make the
  following partitions at least this large:

   / 3.4 GB

   If you do not go back to the partitioner and increase the size of
  these partitions, the installation may fail."

  The message is very confusing to a new user who did not specify any
  partition sizes themselves.

  The installer created a 6GB Swap partition on the 8GB drive. The
  installer then could not install to the root partition and failed
  midway:

  "The installer encountered an error copying files to the hard disk:

  [Errno 28] No space left on device

  This is due to there being insufficient disk space for the install to
  complete on the target partition. Please run the installer again and
  select a larger partition to install into."

  ..then a box appears stating that the installer has crashed:

  "Installer crashed

  We're sorry; the installer crashed. After you close this window, we'll
  allow you to file a bug report using the integrated bug reporting
  tool. This will gather information about your system and your
  installation process. The details will be sent to our bug tracker and
  a developer will attend to the problem as soon as possible."

  The box cannot be closed. No bug reporting tool launches. The computer
  requires restarting to become usable again.

  Please let me know if you need any more information as this is my
  first bug report.

  Thanks for your time,
  Matthew

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