[Bug 766265] Re: Ubiquity proceeds to use free space without warning

[Colin Watson]

I don't really want to get into things like the situation in comment #21
as part of this bug.  Those tend to be the responsibility of entirely
separate bits of the codebase, even if they look superficially related,
and generally it helps bug management if we restrict bugs to things that
can be fixed by single logical changes.  (In that case, I expect that
perhaps partman-auto decided that it was unable to offer this option for
some reason, perhaps due to restrictions of the awful MBR partition
table format, or perhaps due to a bug.  Multi-boot scenarios really
stretch the MBR format, particularly when you're already close to the
primary partition limit.)  Likewise, issues due to the size fudge
factors being wrong are definitely separate.

I'm also personally not very keen on adding more options back to the
simplified automatic partitioning screen.  This is a design tradeoff,
and really this is Matthew Paul Thomas' bailiwick rather than mine; but
personally I think it's OK to present a smaller (and hence less
confusing) array of options, even if some of them may be ambiguous in
the face of situations where there are multiple disks with free space.
A "largest continuous free space" option could easily end up using a USB
disk unintentionally, for instance, so is not necessarily better.  My
feeling is that making this clearer would require extensive design work,
for example showing a graphical representation of the desired state of
all the disks in your system, and that's starting to overload the
automatic partitioning screen.  I'm happy for design to continue
thinking about this, obviously, but I am in no rush to make changes here
that feel as though they could have very substantial knock-on effects in
terms of other bugs they'd create.  My feeling (which I admit isn't
backed up by research) is that people with multiple disks will on the
whole be more aware than average about what's on which disk, and thus
will be more likely to select manual partitioning options anyway if it
concerns them.

However, going back to comment #15, you note that the button is labelled
"Continue" rather than "Install Now" when an "alongside" option is
selected; and that *is* a clear bug.  If you switch to a different
option and then back, the button changes to "Install Now".  I'll look
into fixing that, at least.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/766265

Title:
  Ubiquity proceeds to use free space without warning

Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “ubiquity” source package in Natty:
  Won't Fix
Status in “ubiquity” source package in Oneiric:
  Won't Fix
Status in “ubiquity” source package in Precise:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Release note:

  If there is at least 5.2 GB of unpartitioned space available on a
  disk, the installer will elect to create an Ubuntu partition in that
  space for the "Install Ubuntu alongside ..." option.  While the normal
  "Install Ubuntu alongside ..." option has a second page for resizing a
  partition, this variant does not.  Pressing "Install Now" will
  immediately start the installation.

  Original bug report follows:

  Binary package hint: ubiquity

  This is really a continuation of bug 652852. Please just begin reading
  about post #35, and apologies in advance if I'm just being impatient.

  We've progressed greatly with this and I know it's not been easy for
  the ubuntu-installer team, particularly Colin and Evan, but I'm still
  concerned about the option to "use largest continuous free space"
  being lumped into "install alongside".

  I have read the spec provided by Evan:

  https://docs.google.com/View?id=dfkkjjcj_101gnkrpg5v#4_5_1_Automatic_partitioning_o_8475526086986065

  Maybe I'm misunderstanding what this means, [maps to resize_use_free
  or use_biggest_free] ????????????

  But ATM the fact is that "install alongside" will use as little as
  10GB, which IMHO is good, but having chosen "alongside" and having no
  opportunity to verify what the installer is going to do certainly
  freaked me out the first time. Quite factually if adequate unallocated
  space exists and you choose "install alongside" the installation just
  begins - period!

  Several questions come to mind. I've not tried it yet but what if I
  had adequate free space on each of two drives? How about adequate free
  space on a USB flash drive?

  It just seems scary to have the installation begin with no idea what
  it's doing. Does that make sense?

  I'm just trying to avoid any nightmare scenarios for noobs.

  OT but I have tried the 'live-upgrade' and 'wubi-if-4-primaries-exist' options and they appear to work great, of course it's impossible to recreate every potential scenario.
  ---
  Architecture: i386
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110422)
  LiveMediaBuild_: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110422)
  Package: ubiquity 2.6.9
  PackageArchitecture: i386
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:en
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
  ProcVersionSignature_: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
  Tags:  natty natty
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
  UserGroups:

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