partitioning bug?

[Michael Tautschnig]

[...]

> > 
> > IMO this is only a minor bug. If you specify 99%- and no other
> > partition, then setup-storage will put the whole disk size into 
> > this partition. People know, that you cannot use 100% of a disk,
> > since there's always some overhead. Even the MBR is sort of
> > overhead. You will also not get 100% inside your file system. 
> > 
> 
> Ok, let's say it this way. As a user, who has partitioning in his mind using tools like fdisk or parted, 100% is not 100% of the disk. It is 100% of the available disk space for a partition. The way it is implemented, it is not the way one would expect since one wants to partition. Imagine the tools console UIs. They do not offer you % normally. But they offer Start and End, where End is predefined by the maximum amount the partition can have (aka. 100% if there is non already).
> So, to use % in a more complicated scenario: defining part1 = 20%, part2 = 50%, part3 = 30% is not working.
> 
> Do you think that is what anyone would expect?
> I can understand that from a bare metal technical view it might be correct --- as you mentioned 100% of the bare disk size can't be used because of overhead. But this is a tool you want to work with and therefore needs to have the user in focus, isn't it?
> 
> > @Michael: I think it should be ok, to document that people should use
> > 99%- instead of 100%.
> 
> I agree. At least you need to document this for the user. But doesn't this proves my point? You need to document it because one would most likely not expect this behavior.
> 

You're right, a tool like setup-storage should rather hide the technical details
and make 100% the user's 100%. And given a partition scheme as you suggested
above with multiple %-sized partitions the 99%- "solution" doesn't work out
nicely anymore. I will therefore try to fix this properly inside setup-storage,
but please don't expect that to happen in the next days.

Best,
Michael

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