Preseed setting wrong partition size

Question

I'm trying to do an install of Debian with the preseed tool. Everything's working great so far, except for the partitions of my disk. Basically what I want is:

/ of 30GB - ext4
/var/lib about 2TB - xfs
swap 2GB

But the system at the end comes like this:

/ 2TB - ext4
swap, about 20GB

Here's the part for the disks of the preseed file:

d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true
d-i partman-auto/purge_lvm_from_device boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
d-i partman-auto/method string regular
# GPT
d-i partman-basicfilesystems/choose_label string gpt
d-i partman-basicfilesystems/default_label string gpt
d-i partman-partitioning/choose_label string gpt
d-i partman-partitioning/default_label string gpt
d-i partman/choose_label string gpt
d-i partman/default_label string gpt

d-i partman-auto/expert-recipe string sql::     \
    32 32 32 free                               \
    $gptonly{ }                                 \
    $primary{ }                                 \
    $bios_boot{ }                               \
    method{ biosgrub }                          \
.                                               \
    30000 32000 30720 ext4                      \
    $gptonly                                    \
    $primary{ } $bootable{ }                    \
    method{ format } format{ }                  \
    use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext4 }        \
    mountpoint{ / }                             \
.                                               \
    2048 4000 2048 linux-swap                   \
    $gptonly                                    \
    method{ swap } format{ }                    \
.                                               \
    2000000 1000 -1 xfs                         \
    $gptonly                                    \
    method{ format } format{ }                  \
    use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ xfs }         \
    mountpoint{ /var/lib/ }           \
    options/noatime{ noatime }                  \
    options/nodiratime{ nodiratime }            \
    options/nobarrier{ nobarrier }              \
.                                               \

d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-partitioning/confirm_copy boolean true
d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true

## Controlling how partitions are mounted
d-i partman/mount_style select traditionnal

Is there something I'm doing wrong?

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 25 '15 at 21:20

The -1 for maximum size of xfs partition is the problem, although it really should not be.

There is a bug (termed as a limitation of the algorithm) in partman-auto that requires a very large number for the maximum size of one of your partitions.

`

5. LIMITATIONS

Due to limitation of the algorithms in partman-auto, there must be at least one partition with high maximal size so that the whole free space can be used. Usually you can give the partition containing /home a maximal size 1000000000 which is high enough for the present storage devices. If the large /home is not an option for you, you can also define in the recipe one additional partition with size 1000000000, method "keep" and leave it unmounted. When the installation completes you can remove it.

Do not use higher than 1000000000 numbers because the shell arithmetic is limited to 31 bits (on i386). `

http://ftp.dc.volia.com/pub/debian/preseed/partman-auto-recipe.txt

the link to the recipe is dead – istepaniuk Sep 29 '21 at 22:35 — istepaniuk, Sep 29 '21 at 22:35

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 31 '19 at 16:43

Whether the bug mentioned by umeboshi is present depends on the version of Debian Installer and Partman that your distribution is using. On Ubuntu 14.04 and newer Debian versions the -1 is supported, but on older versions or needing backwards compatibility the above limitation is accurate.

Supporting evidence from Debian source: https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/blob/master/doc/devel/partman-auto-recipe.txt

Preseed setting wrong partition size

2 Answers2

5. LIMITATIONS