[SOLVED] Unable to install Kubuntu 24.04 LTS on a Dell laptop 512 G hard drive - insufficient space?

[jleach]

I am trying to install Kubuntu 24.04 LTS on a Windows7 Dell Precision 5510 with a 512 GB hard drive. I boot the 24.04 LTS iso image on a flash drive, then select “Try or Install Kubuntu”. When I get to the first screen, I select Install Kubuntu which always fails saying “There is not enough disk space. At least 8 GiB is required”. I want to repartition the entire disk manually for Kubuntu but cannot get to that step. I have successfully done this many times on an old Dell Latitudes with no problems and others seem to be able to install on the Dell Precisions. Suggestions appreciated. I am completely out of ideas.

The partitioning of the disk drive is as follows. Partition 2 seems to be the problem.
partition 1: 500 MB Healthy EFI System Partition
partition 2: 917 MB Healthy Primary Partition (NTFS) – marged from recovery and oem partitions
partition 3: 475.55 GB Windows7 (NTFS)

Can anyone help?

[jleach]

I have solved this problem - the installer was not seeing the hard drive and was saying the 8G flash did not have enough space. The target is a Dell Precision 5510 which is not on the Ubuntu list of supported laptops. However, on https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000123462/recommended-bios-settings-for-your-linux-system it says that the BIOS SATA operation must be changed from "RAID On" to AHCI. I did this and the 24.04 Kubuntu installed finally sees the hard drive. I have installed 24.04 on that 100G partition and will see what problems I run into.

I am using the unsupported Dell Precision 5510 because I have two of them running Windows7. What will run on Windows7 keeps shrinking and Windows10 is just not an option. So I will install kubuntu on these 5510's or just get some hardware on the supported list. Anyway, thanks to everyone who took the time to help me.

[Snowhog]

Windows 'reserves' the entire disk it is installed on, even if it isn't occupying the entire disk. You must shrink the Windows Volume you want to use to install Linux onto from Windows. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...a-basic-volume

[claydoh]

Is your partition #3 too full? You might not have enough free space.

[jleach]

Thanks!! You got me going in the right direction but there still must be some secret. I used diskmgmt.msc and diskpart to shrink the Windows7 partition and ended up with the following layout.

partition 1: 500 MB EFI System Partition
partition 2: 918 MB Unallocated merging of the OEM and recovery partitions
partition 3: 371.35 GB Windows7
partition 4: 104.20 GB Unallocated the result of shrinking the Windows7 partition

I boot using a Kubuntu 24.04 LTS flash drive and select "Install Kubuntu". This fails with the error message "There is not enough drive space. At least 8 GiB is required". You mentioned that Windows "reserves" the entire disk but I cannot see an option to unreserve anywhere. Diskmgmt.msc shows them as unallocated but I do not see another option to unreserve it. I have searched the web for installing kubuntu on a windows box but I do not see anything additional to what your link said to do.

I did all of my earlier experimentation on a Dell Latitude D820 and had no problems with formatting the disk where Windows was installed. XP? Maybe there is something unique about this Dell Precision 5510?

Anyway, any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks again
Jim

[jlittle]

One way forward is to choose manual partitioning in the installer. The interface is clunky IMO; one modifies entries in the list of partitions and space. Modify the 100 GB entry to have mount point "/". Set the file system type; simplest is to create one btrfs partition taking up all the space, but if you prefer ext4 you can create one, or two to separate the Linux root from /home, by setting the size to 40 GB, then making another using the rest of the space and setting the mount point /home.

(If you choose one btrfs, / and /home will be separated using subvolumes.)

[jleach]

I would love to do that but I cannot get to the partitioning step. I boot from the kubuntu 24.04 flash drive and get to the screen that gives me the choice to try kubuntu or install kubuntu. I select install kubuntu and quickly get an error screen saying there is not enough disk space and I do not have a way to get any further. The partitioning above shows there is a 104.20 GB unassigned partition. Can't the kubuntu installer see the partition? My guess is that I have to do some sort of book keeping to the partition to say it is free but I do not know what it is. So far I have tried to have it unassigned and a formatted windows drive. I have searched the windows diskmgmt.msc menus to no avail. I had no problems on that Dell Lattitude K820 but this Precision seems to be a different animal. Anyway, I cannot get to the manual partitioning step.

[jlittle]

An installer crash... I've had a few with the new installer, "calamares". If you "Try Kubuntu" start the installer in a konsole, sudo calamares from a hazy memory, you may see a bunch of errors in the konsole window. It's tedious to track down the error, but if you post the error trace here, or google for the first error, a workaround might be possible. Knowing a bit of Python can help.

[jleach]

I have solved this problem - the installer was not seeing the hard drive and was saying the 8G flash did not have enough space. The target is a Dell Precision 5510 which is not on the Ubuntu list of supported laptops. However, on https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000123462/recommended-bios-settings-for-your-linux-system it says that the BIOS SATA operation must be changed from "RAID On" to AHCI. I did this and the 24.04 Kubuntu installed finally sees the hard drive. I have installed 24.04 on that 100G partition and will see what problems I run into.

I am using the unsupported Dell Precision 5510 because I have two of them running Windows7. What will run on Windows7 keeps shrinking and Windows10 is just not an option. So I will install kubuntu on these 5510's or just get some hardware on the supported list. Anyway, thanks to everyone who took the time to help me.

[jlittle]

The target is a Dell Precision 5510 which is not on the Ubuntu list of supported laptops.

I wouldn't pay any mind to such lists. I expect kubuntu to run on any consumer x86_64 computer, though GPUs and wifi chips can give trouble.

[oshunluvr]

In my many - too many - years experience with Dell machines I've not run into a single thing that I can recall that didn't just work right out of the box when installing Linux. Dell sells Linux machines and I doubt it would be worth the trouble and cost to have different hardware for Linux vs. Windows.

[jleach]

It may be that you can install Kubuntu on any Dell laptop but this 5510 Precision (512G disk, 32G RAM) had some details that I had to be changed in the BIOS before it would see the disk, and a few more to boot on powerup. Doing an F2 into the BIOS change ...
config > Drives SATA-0, SATA-1, M-2 PCIe SSD-0 all remained checked. No changes
system config > SATA Operation > "RAID On" has to be unchecked and AHCI checked - this allows the disk to be seen
boot sequence > EUFI is unselected and Legacy Boot is selected - this allow booting directly to linux after powerup, avoiding F12
I read a lot about recommended partitioning and got the system to boot reliably. I used GPT partitioning and set it up as shown below.
partition 1: 8G unformatted bios-grub
partition 2: 64G swap - probably way overkill
partition 3: 200G /home
partition 4: 100G /
partition 5: ~104G /opt
This reliably boots on powerup so I am now installing applications, learning my lessons. Any comments on any of this appreciated. Gotta learn somehow. This is not necessarily the target machine, it is my learning machine so ready to learn by my mistakes.

Thanks for taking the time to help.
Jim

[jlittle]

I'll have to take my assertions back; I should have looked more closely, "Windows 7". Must be old.

I'm not sure if Kubuntu can install a legacy BIOS boot these days. I think it could be done, with some manual installation. Installing first a distro that targets old hardware might be a first step.

If you can possibly change to UEFI, having tossed Windows 7, that would be the way to go. With UEFI an ESP, formatted FAT32 will be needed, not the bios-grub. Note that to do a UEFI install, the installer USB must be booted in UEFI mode, and correspondingly to do a BIOS install, even to GPT formatted storage, the USB must be booted in BIOS mode. How one chooses between these depends on the hardware.

[oshunluvr]

...I'm not sure if Kubuntu can install a legacy BIOS boot these days. I think it could be done, with some manual installation...

I installed 24.10 to a VM here without EFI or any manual configuration.

I believe they have configured Calamares to work with both EFI and legacy.

[claydoh]

Yes, the ISO image is still a hybrid one - it boots to either EFI or to MBR "legacy" BIOS, whichever method the system uses.

[jleach]

If the BIOS has EUFI selected, I can not see the hard drive during installation, only the 8G installation flash drive. The only way I can see the hard drive is if I switch to legacy so I do not see any way to go with EUFI on this laptop. I have used the above partitioning (except the bios-grub is 8M, not 8G) and have been able to install Kubuntu 24.04 LTS. I am rebooting reliably for a week and figuring out how to install the apps I want to have the same functionality as my windows7 (vpn, virus, etc). I might install 24.04 again to come up with a cleaner install - I am making a lot of goofs learning how to get things running. But I need to get to a new home.

The Dell Precision 5510's were received in mid 2016 with Windows7. I hung onto Windows7 as long as I could, never planning to go any further in Windows. In the past few months my VPN dropped further support and Firefox dropped video DRM support so time to move along. Anyway, that is why the 5510's are so old. Maybe this EUFI/Legacy problem is why Canonical does not put the 5510 on the supported list.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will put them on the kubuntu installation list for the second 5510.
Jim