Control: severity -1 important Please someone do this, having these small default sizes for /boot is really annoying and has been the only reason I had to reinstall Debian on several systems over the years. Let me explain.
I usually use guided partitioning to set up encrypted LVM. Doing this, it is not that simple to change the size of /boot. I think it is equivalent to doing the whole partitioning manually. Also, having an encrypted LVM starting right after /boot, it is very complicated to change the size of /boot later. So it is important to have a sensible default for the size of /boot. I have one system where /boot is 162M which was apparently the default a few years ago. Even after changing the initrd encryption to xz, every single kernel upgrade fails, because dkms does a backup of the initrd, so one needs at least 3-4 times the space of the initrd to be available to do an update. After the failed update I always have to delete the dkms backup and run apt install -f. I just did a fresh install of Debian 10 (amd64) and guess what, the size of /boot is 256M, with the size of the default initrd.img 64.2M. System.map and vmlinuz add another 8.7M. Free space on /boot: 147M. This will probably make kernel updates fail in 2 years if the encryption is not changed to xz. (Of course always making sure that only a single kernel image is installed before the update.) 512M is already a low value for the size of /boot today. Best, Tobias On Mon, 8 Jan 2018 11:50:05 +0000 Jonathan Dowland <j...@debian.org> wrote: > Package: debian-installer > Version: 20171204 > Severity: wishlist > > Hi there! Filing this after a discussion on IRC. For various guided > partitioning profiles (at least "use entire disk and use LVM") the created > /boot is 256M in size[1]. > > I'd like to suggest a larger default, at least 512M[2]. Note: this would only > change the default for guided partitioning and would not prevent someone from > manually specifying a smaller size. > > Rationale: > > with current kernel and default initramfs/generator settings, you need roughly > 33.2M for a vmlinuz/initramfs/system.map triplet on amd64. So there's enough > room for 7 at a time, but you also need at least 10M for grub, and that may > very a lot depending on the specifics of the host. > > I think the default should leave enough room for a user to install more rescue > options, since it can be very hard/impossible to grow /boot later on if they > decide they want it. GRML currently requires ~280M for the small version (600M > for the fully featured version). grml-rescueboot is a very nice integration > package to add grml ISOs to the GRUB menu and it would be nice if it would be > usable on a default installation without having the foresight to manually set > the /boot size larger. (There's also grub-imageboot as a more generic > solution, > the user may wish to put e.g. BIOS/firmware update ISOs in /boot for use with > this, etc.) > > > This seems like a nice bug for a beginner to patch, and I am a beginner for > d-i (but anyone else who wants to try please don't let me stop you) > > > [1] perhaps things are more complex than that and it depends on the size of > the > disk; it has appeared 256G for me with VM tests (=8G drive) and real > drives > (=512G) > > [2] Exactly how large, I'm sure, many might have an opinion on; let the > discussion > commence! > > -- System Information: > Debian Release: 9.1 > APT prefers stable > APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (600, 'unstable') > Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) > > Kernel: Linux 4.9.68-x86_64-linode89 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) > Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), > LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) > Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash > Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) > > -- > > ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ > ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland > ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net > ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list. > >
