Comment 23 for bug 766265

I've been doing some testing related to bug 775124 and the two do somewhat play into a common problem. Of course hardware limitations make it impossible to test every given possibility but I try really hard.

Anyway I'd tried using an old blank 3.2GB ATA drive and it was a no go and I'm thinking that the disc space requirement should be treated the same as the power source and internet connection options, with the caveat that only the manual partitioning option should be offered if the disc space is below a specified number of MB/GB, probably with a strong warning in bold red font!

So just for fun I tried creating a free space of about 4.6GB and attempting an installation with the Ubuntu Oneiric Alpha 3 image but I get no option to use manual partitioning, the auto-install just begins :^(

That of course creates a new swap partition which gobbles up too much space, causing the installation to crash because there's not enough room for /. You see, at the very least one must always be offered the ability to use manual partitioning regardless of free space.

We do that in a few other scenarios by displaying a secondary screen showing what's going to happen, explaining that some partitions are hidden, and you can click to "use the advanced partitioning tool". I think using that tool needs to always be offered at some point.

Currently unexpected outcomes occur. I've not seen how this can result in data loss, but it certainly is annoying.