Bug#886642: please default to a larger /boot for guided partitioning
Package: debian-installer
Version: 20171204
Severity: wishlist
Hi there! Filing this after a discussion on IRC. For various guided
partitioning profiles (at least "use entire disk and use LVM") the created
/boot is 256M in size[1].
I'd like to suggest a larger default, at least 512M[2]. Note: this would only
change the default for guided partitioning and would not prevent someone from
manually specifying a smaller size.
Rationale:
with current kernel and default initramfs/generator settings, you need roughly
33.2M for a vmlinuz/initramfs/system.map triplet on amd64. So there's enough
room for 7 at a time, but you also need at least 10M for grub, and that may
very a lot depending on the specifics of the host.
I think the default should leave enough room for a user to install more rescue
options, since it can be very hard/impossible to grow /boot later on if they
decide they want it. GRML currently requires ~280M for the small version (600M
for the fully featured version). grml-rescueboot is a very nice integration
package to add grml ISOs to the GRUB menu and it would be nice if it would be
usable on a default installation without having the foresight to manually set
the /boot size larger. (There's also grub-imageboot as a more generic solution,
the user may wish to put e.g. BIOS/firmware update ISOs in /boot for use with
this, etc.)
This seems like a nice bug for a beginner to patch, and I am a beginner for
d-i (but anyone else who wants to try please don't let me stop you)
[1] perhaps things are more complex than that and it depends on the size of the
disk; it has appeared 256G for me with VM tests (=8G drive) and real drives
(=512G)
[2] Exactly how large, I'm sure, many might have an opinion on; let the discussion
commence!
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.1
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (600, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 4.9.68-x86_64-linode89 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.
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