Guided partitioning shortcut "max" gives minimum space instead

[Lars Noodén]

When installing the Alternate AMD64+Mac image in the guided partitioning, the short cut "max" actually gives the *minimum* amount of space possible. Leaving the unused partition with the maximum. These should be switched, so that the partition in use get the maximum amount of space and the unused partition gets the minimum.

http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/milestones/264/builds/41203/testcases

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1163908

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

I subscribed because I'm curious about this. I don't think it's so much a matter of needing to change the behavior but rather how we describe which partition we're referring to. That said I can't think of a wiser to describe it :^(

[Lars Noodén (larsnooden)]

It may be an easy solution to just swap the strings 'max' and 'min' in the partitioning utility. They seem to work ok, just that they respond to the wrong label.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Phill Whiteside (phillw)]

Sad to see, this is still here in Wily.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Could somebody explain to me what this means? "Sub test case 2: Repeat the test case and select the maximum size for the partition" Am I supposed to install 2 times?

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

I did not try to run the test case precisely, but I did pick the resizer after selecting a partition.

While the behavior may seem weird, it is consistent with the wording of the dialogs in d-i, and in just about anywhere else: you resize the selected partition to some size, and the free space will be automatically partitioned (which will include / and swap, or other partitions as defaulted in d-i). In other words, you're really working on the selected, already-existing partitioned space and choosing to resize it: "max" means keep the size as big as it possibly can, while freeing up a bit of disk space for further use, and has to be this way to maintain the same behavior as other d-i panels.

Given that as stated above, this is both consistent with other partitioning dialogs in d-i and consistent with the way other applications tend to approach resizing existing partitions, I'm not tempted to change this.

Any reasonable suggestions for rewording the template are obviously welcome, as are good patches which might rework this in a sane way. Reassigning to partman-partitioning which seems to be the best option for now. I'm keeping this bug open in case there are patches to improve on the wording, if it can help users make more sense of this dialog.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Mathieu's comment matches my experience of following the test case with the lubuntu alternate image. The existing partition was set to 11.8GB (after choosing max) and the partition for the new install was set to 2682MB.

[Phill Whiteside (phillw)]

:: Sigh :: still here..... is there no one capable of swapping the words "min" and "max" around? :D :D :D ... Pretty please!!!!