dell-recovery shows no error when the target disk space is insufficient

[cktenn]

When fresh installing with OS recovery media, if users by chance select a target disk with small capacity that is not enough to install the system and create a recovery partition, the installation process will end up with an error that gives insufficient information for what went wrong.

In the case of a notebook with a 1TB HDD and a 16GB NVME, the NVME is not designed for installing OS, but users may select it from the target disk menu and have an error message pops up in the end:

"Installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1"

Which is hard to figure out the root cause is insufficient disk space.

Dell-recovery should prevent users from choosing it by hiding it or showing a warning message.

upstream bug tracking:
 - https://github.com/dell/dell-recovery/issues/82

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

16GB NVME isn't big enough for installing OS? This is surprising to me. If this is the case, there are two solutions I see:

1) perhaps we should just not show disks < 32GB NVME with dell-recovery UX.
2) Sort the list and pick the biggest disk by default.

[Cyrus Lien (cyruslien)]

The SWAP partition policy, FYI.
2 * physical memory size, but no swap will be created when self.mem >= 32G or self.disk_size <= 64G

[cktenn (cktenn)]

The Platform information

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1005G1 CPU @ 1.20GHz
Graphic: VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:8a56] (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
GPU sub ID: Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:097b]
Audio: Intel Corporation Device [8086:34c8] (rev 30) (prog-if 80)
RAM: 8 GB
HDD(2): ata-ST1000LM035-1RK172_WKP1HZSK
nvme-INTEL_MEMPEK1J016GAD_BTBT83541F6L016N
Ethernet: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 07)
MAC: D8:D0:90:43:62:A5
Wireless: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0042] (rev 31) [DW1810]
BT: 0cf3:e009 Atheros Communications, Inc.
WWAN: N/A
Adapter: 45w
Touchscreen: N/A
Touchpad: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad.
Webcam: 0bda:5675 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
DMI: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr88.4.5:bd07/11/2019:svnDellInc.:pnInspiron5493:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0FDI4G:rvrX02:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:
BIOSID: pci:v00008086d00008A02sv00001028sd0000097Bbc06sc00i00

# dmidecode 3.1
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.1 present.

Handle 0x0B00, DMI type 11, 5 bytes
OEM Strings
String 1: Dell System
String 2: 1[097B]
String 3: 3[1.0]
String 4: 12[www.dell.com]
String 5: 14[1]
String 6: 15[0]
String 7: 27[32854083338]

[cktenn (cktenn)]

Partition size and swapfile size

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /dev
tmpfs 775M 1.4M 773M 1% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p2 3.6G 3.0G 570M 85% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 1.8G 1.8G 0 100% /rofs
/cow 3.8G 408M 3.4G 11% /
tmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 8.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 3.8G 12K 3.8G 1% /tmp
tmpfs 775M 20K 775M 1% /run/user/999
/dev/nvme0n1p3 9.5G 9.3G 0 100% /target
/dev/nvme0n1p1 239M 2.5M 236M 2% /target/boot/efi
/dev/sdb2 60G 3.1G 57G 6% /tmp/mnt

---------
-rw------- 1 root root 4.5G Sep 5 09:23 /target/swapfile

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

Can this PR please be tested? It's expected to resolve the issue.

https://github.com/dell/dell-recovery/pull/84

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

Fix has been added to master here: https://github.com/dell/dell-recovery/commit/3063f206d3e1cda82d1d5239926eff3fc25f980a

Here is the backport for bionic branch:
https://github.com/dell/dell-recovery/commit/3063f206d3e1cda82d1d5239926eff3fc25f980a