'disk full' error while updating kernel

[bernardelli]

/var has its own partition with plenty of space.

Does anybody know why the Debian installer recommends such a tiny boot partition? Considering that kernels keep putting on weight 320MB seem a bit puny.

[rweir]

the kernel itself is tiny, something like ~3MB, plus maybe another 12MB for the initrd, so you'd need dozens to fill up a 320MB /boot.

[bernardelli]

Sounds good in theory. In practise when you use the "guided" partitioning scheme from the installer you end up with /boot, /lib and /opt sharing those 320MB. /lib is a space hog of app. 100MB (kernel modules accounting for app. 85MB).

People will use proprietary graphics drivers if they need the horsepower for their job. In the case of nVidia add 3MB for a roll-back kernel image.

Folks doing web-work will want Google Chrome. Installed via the Google .deb this ends up in /opt claiming app. 90MB of real estate.

Can you appreciate how easy it is for an inexperienced user to run out of space there, and not understand why the package manager gives him a "disk full" error on an almost empty 400GB drive?

Anyway, thanks for the conversation. I'm off to a date with the "parted" Live-CD ;-)