Bug#1032940: 1,5 gig disk not accepted by installer

[Marc Haber]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 02:00:32PM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
> With a 2 GB partition, installation proceeds.

... and fails because on a system with 1 GB RAM, an 1 GB swap partition
is created, leaving 1018 MB for /target, which is not enough to install
base system plus kernel.

Greetings
Marc

[Marc Haber]

Package: installation-reports
Severity: normal
Tags: d-i

(Please provide enough information to help the Debian
maintainers evaluate the report efficiently - e.g., by filling
in the sections below.)

Boot method: CD image
Image version: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/bookworm_di_alpha2/amd64/iso-cd/debian-bookworm-DI-alpha2-amd64-netinst.iso download on 2023-03-14
Date: <Date and time of the install>

Machine: KVM VM
Partitions: none, disk empty, parted saying "unrecognised disk label"


Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Initial boot: [O ]
Detect network card: [O ]
Configure network: [O ]
Detect media: [O ]
Load installer modules: [O ]
Clock/timezone setup: [O ]
User/password setup: [O ]
Detect hard drives: [O ]
Partition hard drives: [E ]
Install base system: [ ]
Install tasks: [ ]
Install boot loader: [ ]
Overall install: [ ]

Comments/Problems:
No formal installation report since the install didn't complete.

An empty disk image of 1,5 Gigabytes in size is rejected by the
Installer after the "Guided - use entire disk" choice and selecting vda
with the message "Failed to partition the selected disk, this probably
happened because the selected disk or free space is too small to be
automatically partitioned."

The release notes Chapter 2.5 "Memory and disk requirements" say that
920 MB of hard disk space should be enough.

Either the release notes are wrong or the installer is wrongly detecting
the disk too small or there is some by-condition that I missed (maybe
the swap partition?).

With a 2 GB partition, installation proceeds.

Greetings
Marc

[Holger Wansing]

Control: reassign -1 installation-guide
thanks


Hi,

Marc Haber <mh+debian...@zugschlus.de> wrote (Tue, 14 Mar 2023 14:00:32 +0100):
> Boot method: CD image
> Image version: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/bookworm_di_alpha2/amd64/iso-cd/debian-bookworm-DI-alpha2-amd64-netinst.iso download on 2023-03-14
> Date: <Date and time of the install>

[...]

> An empty disk image of 1,5 Gigabytes in size is rejected by the
> Installer after the "Guided - use entire disk" choice and selecting vda
> with the message "Failed to partition the selected disk, this probably
> happened because the selected disk or free space is too small to be
> automatically partitioned."
>
> The release notes Chapter 2.5 "Memory and disk requirements" say that
> 920 MB of hard disk space should be enough.
>
> Either the release notes are wrong or the installer is wrongly detecting
> the disk too small or there is some by-condition that I missed (maybe
> the swap partition?).

1.
Above you mention the release notes, but it's the installation-guide that
you read.

2.
You used an image for bookworm, but you read the installation-guide for
bullseye. Not the solution, just for completeness, if someone asks himself,
where to find the "920 MB" value.

3.
As the error message says: your disk was to small for automatic partitioning.
With such minimal disk space, you get more flexibility, if you use manual
partitioning.
With a 3G disk for example, I was able to perform a successful installation:
create 600MB swap and the rest for / works fine so far.

Chapter 2.5 of the bookworm's installation-guide mentions 1160MB as minimum
available disk space (920MB in bullseye).
I seem to remember, that this value is the absolute minimal HDD space
for the debian release, which means over all archs!
So, 1160MB might work for s390x or similar, amd64 might need more.
That's why chapter 2.5 points to chapter 3.4 for "more realistic figures".
And there it says "2G hard drive for 'No desktop' systems".

But as you say, 2G is not enough these days (a test confirmed that here).

So, we should set this to 4G IMHO.
(A test installation with 3G disk space was successful here, when you do
not waste to much space for swap, but let's not be that nitpicking.)


Holger


--
Holger Wansing <hwan...@mailbox.org>
PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508 3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076

[Holger Wansing]

Hi,

Holger Wansing <hwan...@mailbox.org> wrote (Tue, 14 Mar 2023 22:50:05 +0100):
> As the error message says: your disk was to small for automatic partitioning.
> With such minimal disk space, you get more flexibility, if you use manual
> partitioning.
> With a 3G disk for example, I was able to perform a successful installation:
> create 600MB swap and the rest for / works fine so far.
>
> Chapter 2.5 of the bookworm's installation-guide mentions 1160MB as minimum
> available disk space (920MB in bullseye).
> I seem to remember, that this value is the absolute minimal HDD space
> for the debian release, which means over all archs!
> So, 1160MB might work for s390x or similar, amd64 might need more.
> That's why chapter 2.5 points to chapter 3.4 for "more realistic figures".
> And there it says "2G hard drive for 'No desktop' systems".
>
> But as you say, 2G is not enough these days (a test confirmed that here).
>
> So, we should set this to 4G IMHO.
> (A test installation with 3G disk space was successful here, when you do
> not waste to much space for swap, but let's not be that nitpicking.)

Objections? Comments?

[Holger Wansing]

Control: tags -1 + pending

Holger Wansing <hwan...@mailbox.org> wrote (Sun, 19 Mar 2023 11:42:20 +0100):
> > But as you say, 2G is not enough these days (a test confirmed that here).
> >
> > So, we should set this to 4G IMHO.
> > (A test installation with 3G disk space was successful here, when you do
> > not waste to much space for swap, but let's not be that nitpicking.)
>
> Objections? Comments?

Just pushed to git.