Bug#837885: debian-installer: Installer does not check disk size prior to installation
On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 03:11:51AM -0400, nils wrote:
>Package: debian-installer
>Version: Stretch Alpha 7
>Severity: important
>Tags: d-i
>
>Dear Maintainer,
>
>- Installing stretch alpha 7 in virtualbox
>- set up an 8gb disk, with full disk partitioning, separate home partition
>- got partitions of 2 (home), 4 (swap) and 2 (home) GB
>- installer failed with a generic error message "A step falied..." when the target disk was full
>- redid it with no separate home partiton, and the installation needs 3,5GB
>
>The installer should check for required disk space before
>installation (or at least once before downloading, and then again
>before isntalling) to check that he disk is big enough. Also, the
>error message should be a little less generic as novices will not
>understand what's wrong.
It's a difficult thing to solve reliably - when you're partitioning,
d-i has very little idea of what tasks/packages you're going to be
installing later.
Another wrinkle is that we don't have reliable data to know how much
space a set of packages will take to install later, which is
(admittedly) not very good. I've spoken to people about that before;
I'll prod again...
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
"I can't ever sleep on planes ... call it irrational if you like, but I'm
afraid I'll miss my stop" -- Vivek Das Mohapatra
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