Comment 14 for bug 775124

@lbsolost: You wrote:

> So, if I were using the Lubuntu live CD, and I tried installing to
> a 4GB drive with either an existing swap partition, or if it
> were a blank drive (that is all free space), the installer would
> presumably still fail ...

> If I'm mistaken please let me know.

OK... I think you are mistaken, at least in some cases :) The Lubuntu 11.04 LiveCD, with the one file hacked so the "limit" value is smaller, installs fine for me on a 3GB hard drive (virtual hard drive, in a VM). I don't remember the RAM size I had on that VM, probably 256MB or 512MB.

The problem I have with the idea of "just make all the tests into warnings" is that it could increase the number of unhelpful "bug reports" when newcomers do impractical things on inadequate hardware, and then blame Ubuntu! I suspect that preventing this was probably behind the "hard" limit for disk space that is currently implemented.

I am still very time limited, but will look into detecting the Ubuntu "flavour" being installed, and using it to decide what the size limit is, hopefully this weekend. That could be a quick fix that needs no UI changes, no extra files on the CD image, etc. My current thinking would be to use the current code for the "big boys" (Ubuntu and Kubuntu), and use a "casper/filesystem.size + offset" approach for Lubuntu and Xubuntu, with "offset" being of the order of 600MB. Any other flavours (new ones I don't know about?) should of course default to using the "very safe" approach that is currently in place.

Anyone with comments/suggestions/reasons why this is a terrible idea, please state them :)