Hi Stephen,
Stephen Gelman <
ssgelm@debian.org> (2022-05-17):
In trying to track down this bug, I found that
partman-auto-lvm/guided_size was added and according to
https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/partman-auto-lvm/-/blob/master/debian/partman-auto-lvm.templates#L77-L79,
defaults to a value of "some number". Unsurprisingly, this is not a
valid number configuration option, so the maximum size doesn't get set
properly. Setting "d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string max" in my
preseed restores the previous behavior. I believe there are two issues
here:
1. "partman-auto-lvm/guided_size" should default to "max" in order to
maintain compatibility with previous releases.
2. When "partman-auto-lvm/guided_size" is set to an invalid value it
seems that the code does not behave properly. I'm not sure what behavior
I'd expect, but I don't think the behavior I am seeing of picking the
minimum size for each partition is correct.
Without trying to second guess why this default value is there instead
of something else, you can check partman-auto-lvm/perform_recipe_by_lvm
and the few db_subst calls.
I suppose the big difference between preseeding and not preseeding is the
seen flag checked at the top of the while loop. I don't remember all the
details around preseeding but I'd think "auto" means most questions are
flagged as seen, which means you don't get the default replacement you'd
get with an interactive installation.
I'm not too sure how to best approach a possible fix. While the issue
has cost you some debugging time, having to be explicit about how much
space should be used for LVM doesn't look /that/ bad to me (even if that
means that recipes that had been working for some releases no longer
do).
That being said, maybe there are some places in the documentation and/or
examples where we should add that.
Cheers,
--
Cyril Brulebois (
kibi@debian.org) <
https://debamax.com/>
D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant