Bug#570410: partman-base: Please default to GB

[Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>]

On Thursday 18 February 2010, maximilian attems wrote:
> if one partitions and neglects to add a suffix partman falls back
> to use megabytes. noticed on a goofed installed where debootstrap
> failed due to full disk. better default to gigabytes these days.

One reason to stay with MB could be that fdisk uses MB by default.

Another, more important reason is that IIRC we always display the suggested 
size with a MB suffix, which makes it logical that that's also the default 
units if no suffix is entered. If we make this change we should also 
consider changing the default display unit to GB.
Main disadvantage of that is that we will either lose precision in the 
displayed MINSIZE and MAXSIZE for the partition, or we'll have to use 
variable units for that depending on the size of the partition, or we'll 
have to display more decimals.

Also, the patch by itself is not enough. We will also need to change 
relevant templates.

- partman-partitioning/new_size
  Currently does not mention the default units (which may have contributed
  to the error). IMO that should be added.
- partman-partitioning/bad_new_size
  That template _does_ mention the default unit.
- others?
  There may also be other templates that need changing, for example for
  LV size. I did not do a full scan!

All in all, not a change to make lightly.

As an alternative to the proposed patch we could simply mention the default 
units in the partman-partitioning/new_size dialog.

Cheers,
FJP