#757316 whole disk one big partition is a bad default

Package:
partman-auto
Source:
partman-auto
Submitter:
積丹尼 Dan Jacobson
Date:
2014-09-23 22:06:08 UTC
Severity:
normal
#757316#5
Date:
2014-08-07 06:35:41 UTC
From:
To:
Please do not make the default for beginners making the whole disk one
big partition anymore.

Just leave a little free space just in case...

You never know when they might need to tune their unmounted file system
etc...
#757316#10
Date:
2014-08-07 06:41:13 UTC
From:
To:
07.08.2014 10:35, 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson wrote:

How much is "a little" ?

So once we do this, people will start filing bugreports saying that
debian does not use all their HDD space even if told to do so.

I don't think it is right.

Thanks,

/mjt
#757316#15
Date:
2014-08-07 06:41:13 UTC
From:
To:
07.08.2014 10:35, 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson wrote:

How much is "a little" ?

So once we do this, people will start filing bugreports saying that
debian does not use all their HDD space even if told to do so.

I don't think it is right.

Thanks,

/mjt
#757316#20
Date:
2014-08-07 08:36:16 UTC
From:
To:
reassign 757316 partman-auto
tags 757316 wontfix
thanks

Quoting Michael Tokarev (mjt@tls.msk.ru):


Agreed. The purpose of auto-partitioning is providing users with a
simple, default way to setup partitions "without thinking". As, at any
time, people are able to go back and play with the default
partitioning, I think this is the best (or less worse) way to handle
all possible cases. After all, there are probably as many possible
partitioning strategies as there are users...:-)

Anyway, reassigning the bug report to the package it belongs....and
marking it the way I think the majority in D-I developers think it
should be marked (as of now, I could make a -sadly bad- joke by saying that my
opinion probably counts as "half of the opinions of D-I developers",
the other half being Kibi...:-)
#757316#29
Date:
2014-08-07 13:15:04 UTC
From:
To:
1% would be fine...
Else one day when they e.g., want to upgrade from ext4 to ext5 etc. and face
http://www.debian-administration.org/article/643/Migrating_a_live_system_from_ext3_to_ext4_filesystem
and end up with Kernel panic – not syncing Attempted to kill init when
something goes wrong.

All because they had no more room to copy /sbin etc.
#757316#34
Date:
2014-09-23 08:10:54 UTC
From:
To:
積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org> writes:

Just as a suggestion to anyone coming after (lamenting that they have a
fully partitioned disk and so are stuck in the situation you describe:

  There is always the option to shrink swap, or run the upgrade without
  swap, and use some or all of the swap partition as scratch space for
  the duration of the operation.

There's no need to leave some of the disk fallow to deal with such an
eventuality, especially when the users that this default is aimed at
will most likely not discover the reserved space anyway.

Cheers, Phil.
#757316#39
Date:
2014-09-23 22:02:50 UTC
From:
To:
Well OK, I hope they will mostly make swap.