Ubuntu
ubiquity package

Partitioning step not newbie friendly

Bug #91239 reported by Jaap Haitsma
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
ubiquity (Baltix)
New
Undecided
Unassigned
ubiquity (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Colin Watson

Bug Description

Binary package hint: ubiquity

The prepare disk space is a bit scary for new users.

It gives three options

1. Guided (Use entire disk)
2. Guided (Use free space)
3. Manual

My recommendation would be that ubiquity detects if another operating system is installed and gives a recommendation based on that. And also tells what the effects are of the installation.

E.g. when the entire disk contains a windows XP partition, show an option to shrink that partition and install ubuntu on the free space.

The manual interface is "very scary". An interface such as gparted would be better I think

Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

gparted is horrible and bad and wrong and has been intentionally removed. There's absolutely no way I'm going back to it; instead I will be progressively improving the current interface. SPECIFIC suggestions would be good rather than vague comments. See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubiquity/AdvancedPartitionerRewrite for the plans (not all of which are done yet).

If the entire disk contains a Windows XP partition, then the installer should already display an option to shrink that partition and install Ubuntu in the free space. Please attach /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman (/var/log/installer/syslog and /var/log/installer/partman if you've completed the installation) to this bug so that I can determine why this didn't happen.

Changed in ubiquity:
assignee: nobody → kamion
status: Unconfirmed → Needs Info
Revision history for this message
Jaap Haitsma (jaap) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Jaap Haitsma (jaap) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Jaap Haitsma (jaap) wrote :

Note these are logs obtained after in windows with partition magic I created empty space

Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

"/lib/partman/automatically_partition/10resize_use_free/choices: enough free space (20970269696) on /var/lib/partman/devices/=dev=sda, no need to resize"

I have removed this check:

partman-auto (62ubuntu8) feisty; urgency=low

  * Don't offer some_device automatic partitioning if no disks are present.
  * resize_use_free: Remove check for whether the disk has < 2.2GB free
    before offering resizing; the number is debatable at best, and the check
    can be annoying if you have multiple hard disks or other similar
    situations.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:12:56 +0000

Do you have any specific comments on the manual partitioner, beyond "very scary"?

Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

Without any further specific comments on the partitioner's interface, I'm going to have to close this. As mentioned, I fixed the resize problem you encountered a while back.

Changed in ubiquity:
status: Incomplete → Fix Released
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