Bug#605516: Bug#602539: Successfull install creates broken system (mounting fs fails)
Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org> writes:
> Goswin von Brederlow, le Thu 02 Dec 2010 08:53:28 +0100, a écrit :
>> You can warn during partitioning if there isn't even space for the
>> standard task.
>
> Some people want to be able to install just the base system and only
> that.
Me too and by that I usualy I mean including standard and ssh and
nothing else. I specifically said "warn" above, just like DI warns if
one does not have a swap partition (which I find rather silly with 4GB
ram on a desktop). I think it is safe to assume people will install at
least standard and if they really only want a bare minimal system and
only use the minimal size for the filesystem then they will have to
ignore the warning and continue anyway.
>> As for size differences for each architecture you can
>> know those.
>
> Nope. As said previously in the thread, it depends on the locale, some
> options in expert mode, etc. And dependencies change all the time
> depending on what maintainers add or remove.
>
>> Install media should not matter.
>
> It surely does: when installing via network, you have to store all the
> debs in /var/cache
Ahh, I thought you ment the media you install to, not from. Yes, a
network install should know that it needs some extra space in /var. But
the size of the debs is known before download so it can compute that
easily enough.
>> Filesystem type and blocksize might to some degree
>
> It can be very huge.
Given that, at least for mke2fs, the blocksize depends on the filesystem
size there isn't much variance there. If your /var partition is large
enough to warrant 4k blocks it will have enough space anyway. And can
you have anything but 4k blocks for /usr and still be big enough?
>> but you can add some safety margin to the warning.
>
> We can not make any promises then.
>
>> As to the users choices, like later selecting gnome or kde, you
>> can then give a warning.
>
> Based on pure guess?...
No. "then" as in when the user has selected kde or gnome but still
before downloading kde/gnome.
>> The important point is to prevent the download of all the debs just to
>> fail at 90%.
>
> Sure, but it's extremely hard to predict without actually simulating
> everything, which _does_ need the download.
So do simulate it. Download all the packages for a task, unpack them and
run du on the relevant directories. Add 10% safety margin and you should
have reasonable values to check against.
>> It is enough if it covers the basic mountpoints like /usr and /var the
>> installer already knows as common mountpoints.
>
> But package management doesn't.
>
> Samuel
Unfortunately no. But listing size requirements for /, /usr, /var,
... for every package in Packages.gz is another wishlist bug.
This does not need to (and can not) be perfect and should only warn. It
doesn't need to be able to predict the required space down to the last
block. If it comes to within 10% of the filesystem size that is
plenty. One shouldn't fill up filesystems anyway.
MfG
Goswin
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