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linuxmint / mint-19.1-beta

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VirtualBox installation: contradictory error report about disk space #59

Closed ghost closed 5 years ago

ghost commented 5 years ago

Describe the bug When trying to install Mint 19.1 beta within VirtualBox (version 5.2), Mint's installer tells me: you need at least 10.7GB to install Mint, and you have only 10.7GB (sic).

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

  1. Set up a VirtualBox with the beta, using VirtualBox's default disk allocation settings.
  2. Boot into the virtualised liveISO (which gave me a 'Cinnamon in software rendering mode' warning - perhaps I had the wrong Vbox settings).
  3. Try to install Mint.

Expected behavior

I expected the install to work or at least to get an error message that made more sense.

Frequency

Retrying from within the same Virtualised Live ISO, without restarting the virtual environment, produced the same error. I tried to restart the VM to test again but - and this seems a bug in its own right - the VM would not restart (and I tried twice).

Edition (Desktop environment): In which edition is this happening? Cinnamon.

Live or post-install: Live and during install.

Screenshots

image

Additional context

When I gave the VM at 25GB preallocated disk, Mint installed.

Host PC: ThinkPad X1CG6 (running Mint 19.0 Cinnamon).

Also: it's unclear to me what the 'skip' button on the installer would do. What would it skip? The current part of the installation process? The installation slide-show?

Finally: even when Mint installed, the graphics were not right:

image

But perhaps I should file a different report for that.

gm10 commented 5 years ago

That's very likely just a rounding issue and not worth looking into. Just increase the size of your virtual disk and it will install just fine.

ghost commented 5 years ago

I think it is worth looking into, because (1) it is a problem one gets with the VirtualBox defaults, (2) it's Mint's installer reporting something that, on the face of it, makes no sense. Thinking 'an experienced user will work out what is going on here' does not gel with Mint's attempt to be an easy-to-use version of Linux.

gm10 commented 5 years ago

Fair enough. It's for Clem to decide, anyway. I don't see him modifying the error message but maybe you can talk him into reducing the required size a little to make it fit on VirtualBox's default, he's the one who raised the installer's minimum requirement to 10 GiB (=10.7 GB) in the first place.

ghost commented 5 years ago

There may be something else to be considered here, namely, that VirtualBox's default disc handling expands disk size as necessary, i.e. uses dynamic disks.

clefebvre commented 5 years ago

We require more than 10GB.

15GB of disk space (20GB recommended)

clefebvre commented 5 years ago

It's hard to know exactly how much the installation would require. It depends on different factors and it would vary as the ISO changes over time.

The error message is funny and a bit silly.

Just tested a Korean installation without codecs, I'm already at 7.1GB, leaving less than 3GB for extras, that's tight. I really don't think 10GB is a good idea, even if it fits. I'd rather have people annoyed during the installation and take measures to increase the space than letting them install the OS and be stuck without free space on their first day of usage.

ghost commented 5 years ago

I'd rather have people annoyed during the installation and take measures to increase the space than letting them install the OS and be stuck without free space on their first day of usage.

DaveBlack commented 5 years ago

On Dec. 11th I added an enhancement idea on vbox forums to increase the default GNU/Linux virtual disk size (for VirtualBox 6.x.x) from 10GB to 20GB, mentioning Mint 19.1 system requirements