Bug 9781

Summary:	Root partition size a bit too small
Product:	Mageia	Reporter:	Philippe Leblanc <philippel>
Component:	Installer	Assignee:	Mageia Bug Squad <bugsquad>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	Normal	CC:	thierry.vignaud
Version:	Cauldron
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Source RPM:		CVE:
Status comment:

Description Philippe Leblanc 2013-04-17 22:41:25 CEST

Description of problem:
As an enhancement to the default Mageia partition layout, we might want to consider increasing the default allocation size of the root partition. Currently if I'm not mistaken, the default size allocated for root is about 12Gb if adequate disk space is supplied. I think with modern desktops and program becoming increasingly large, it might be beneficial to increase the default partition size. For example in my case, my root partition is filled up to 8.5Gb or 77%. And I don't consider myself a user that uses a lot of programs. In addition to the standard Gnome Live installation, I've added XFCE, TexLive and Eclipse as programs of notable size. 12Gb is a bit constricting if one wants to install games or other heavy large programs. I propose we increase default root partition to 20Gb to give more room for wonderful programs from Mageia's extensive repositories. This would mostly benefit less experienced users who may not know how much space they will need in the future. Power users who want to setup a more minimalist system or a basic server without a GUI are naturally more aware of partition layout needs and can always shrink the size of the root partition to their liking. This might be considered for Mageia 4 as it is very late in Mageia 3's development cycle and I don't know invasive such change would be if this proposal were approved.

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Comment 1 Manuel Hiebel 2013-04-19 18:56:55 CEST

it was maybe "fixed" in some way with the bug 3189, wdyt ?

Comment 2 Philippe Leblanc 2013-04-19 19:58:16 CEST

Well bug 3189 does mention problems with the partitioning, but the scenario is a bit different. He was in a restricted space (only 10G from the looks of it) scenario. My thoughts are more about an enhancement when ample space is provided. For example, my total space that I allocated was 60G for Mageia. However, I chose the default partitioning which elected 12G for root, 4G for swap and the rest for home.

I don't think there's any bug with the partitioner. It appears to work as intended when ample space is provided. I reported this more as an enhancement since I feel that 12G is now a bit small for the root partition. A new user who just chooses the default partionning scheme may become limited in space if he wishes to experiment with many desktops, play games or install many libraries for development.

So I just wanted to throw it out there to see if others agree whether 12G is still a sane default, or if we should expand the root partition to a bigger value like 20G to give more room to install more packages. Or, there is another option instead. What if we keep a small root partition, but mount the /usr directory (which is where the bulk of the files are found) on the same partition as the home directory thus allowing it to expand to much larger size if one wishes to install many packages.

This is just an idea based on my opinion about whether we could make the partitioning scheme a little smarter and flexible for future Mageia releases.

Comment 3 Philippe Leblanc 2013-04-29 21:01:23 CEST

In light of bug 9921, it seems that my system was plagued with systemd out-of-control journaling. After purging the vast majority of the logs, it brought down my root partition occupancy to 4.0Gb. I thought my hard driver was being filled up by packages when it wasn't the case at all. With this in mind, I'd have to admit that 12Gb is probably fine for more users as long as the logging stays clean. Should I close this one?

Comment 4 Thierry Vignaud 2013-04-30 22:31:15 CEST

Yes

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
CC: (none) => thierry.vignaud
Resolution: (none) => INVALID