misc new-partitioner problems: swap formatting control not implemented

[cstrippie]

When installing with a manual config, Gnome Part Manager reports all drive sizes in bytes, rather than MB or GB - this will likely confuse many users.

No control buttons are visible on the interface, and only by double-clicking a partition can you modify, create, delete, etc.. the partitions. This operation is not explained anywhere and even then many options are missing.

Lastly, once partitions are established and you are offered the screen to select which partitions are to be formatted, the program would not allow me to select the swap part for formatting. The installer did format the swap partition anyway.

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

Do you mean the partition editor in the installer or did you actually run the Gnome partition editor from the menu? Was this Herd 3?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This isn't gparted at all - it's the new ubiquity partitioner.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

And yes, I know the interface is pretty rough; it was advertised as such in the release announcement. I expect to polish this up before release, but at the moment I'm more concerned with getting all the necessary features in.

I've made partition sizes be displayed in megabytes for my next upload.

Missing UI for swap partition formatting is a bug; I'll look at that ASAP. Thanks.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This fixes your first item:

ubiquity (1.3.18) feisty; urgency=low

  * New partitioner:
    - Disable the mountpoint combo box when creating or editing a partition
      if the method is changed to something other than a filesystem.
    - Handle partman/exception_handler and partman/exception_handler_note
      (LP: #82848).
    - Note that unadorned sizes are assumed to be in megabytes (LP: #82848).
    - Display current partition sizes in megabytes (part of LP: #83166).
    - Implement resizing. Ask for the size using a spinbutton (in megabytes)
      rather than a text entry field.
    - Offer 'fat16' and 'fat32' filesystem types for new partitions rather
      than the non-existent 'fat' (LP: #83211).
    - Fix crash when backing up to automatic partitioning page (LP: #83230).
  * doc/README: Add comment about language pack installation following a
    query from Telmo Baía.
  * Fix crash due to underqualification of debconf.DebconfError (thanks,
    Joel Bryan Juliano; LP: #83008).
  * Automatic update of included source packages: partman-partitioning
    45ubuntu1.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 5 Feb 2007 13:17:27 +0000

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This fixes your second item. Correct handling of swap formatting is still missing.

ubiquity (1.3.22) feisty; urgency=low

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * New partitioner:
    - Fix edit dialog not to try to resize partitions even if the resize
      spinbutton was left untouched (LP: #85227).
    - Add contextual buttons to GTK frontend (part of LP: #83166).
    - Add an undo facility.
    - partman-* updates add validation support (LP: #82768); also add
      XFS-on-/boot validation.
    - Break out of setting the mountpoint if it's invalid (LP: #84543).
  * Fix crash if multiple newworld boot partitions are present (LP: #84429).
  * GTK frontend:
    - Fix backup from user information page if migration-assistant is not
      active (LP: #85642).
    - Fix up step numbers if migration-assistant is disabled (LP: #85711).
    - Disable smooth zooming, as some video drivers are very slow at drawing
      this and it's hard to handle this dynamically (LP: #67572).
  * Fill in a default username based on the user's full name (LP: #84550).
  * Retranslate Forward button when going back from summary page
    (LP: #86047).
  * configure.ac: Bump required GTK version to 2.10.0 (for GtkLinkButton).
  * Automatic update of included source packages: apt-setup 1:0.16ubuntu4,
    base-installer 1.70ubuntu4, choose-mirror 2.10ubuntu2, clock-setup
    0.12ubuntu2, debian-installer-utils 1.42ubuntu2, migration-assistant
    0.4, partman-auto 62ubuntu5, partman-base 100ubuntu4,
    partman-basicfilesystems 51ubuntu2, partman-basicmethods 33ubuntu2,
    partman-efi 11ubuntu2, partman-ext3 45ubuntu2, partman-jfs 20ubuntu2,
    partman-newworld 16ubuntu1, partman-reiserfs 34ubuntu1, partman-target
    46ubuntu2, partman-xfs 32ubuntu1.

  [ Jonathan Riddell ]
  * Add new partitioner for KDE frontend

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:59:44 +0000

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I think swap formatting control needs to be looked at for the final feisty release.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I'm unmilestoning swap formatting control. I had a decent go at implementing it, but ran into partman apparently not offering the option due to acting_filesystem not being there for swap partitions. I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but I don't have time to fix it for release.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I noticed that my swap partition was formatted even thought the checkbox was not checked when installing Tribe 5 of Gutsy Gibbon today.

[tsg1zzn (tsg1zzn)]

I noticed this as well. When the format checkbox is UNCHECKED, the installer STILL FORMATS the swap partition, with the risk of losing data if another distro is hibernated to that swap partition.

[tsg1zzn (tsg1zzn)]

Since this bug seems to completely wipe existing solaris pre-10 installs without asking, I think this should be critical.

Together with the case of another distro hibernated, this is two quite real cases where important data could be lost because the installer formats partitions which are not marked for format.

Even if it's not possible to not format the swap partition, checking the format checkbox to alert the user should be straightforward.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

This was fixed LONG ago.