zram-config 01 and 0.5 load module zram in live even when there is more than 512MB

[Mélodie]

Lubuntu makes use of zram-config in the Live desktop, which brought me to notice zram is loaded even if the machine has more than 512MB.

There is a hook in the /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hoos directory, a compcache script, in which some lines say that zram must not be loaded if a computer has more than 512MB ram.

This part is ignored by the system, as I could notice.

Here is my experience about that :
* zram-config is a good thing to have for machines up to *2GB* RAM;
* in a machine having 3GB RAM and above, the desktop freezes and there is nothing I can do about it excepte reboot;

My recent experience was an attempt to install in a laptop T60 32bits proc with 3 GB RAM, the partition was prepared before, and the machine had since been shutdown and rebooted later, so I was starting fresh (no extra processes than the ones at the start of the live), and after a few windows when I was at the "choose your keyboard" stage, the gui just froze.

I have noticed many times since several editions that using zram-config in computers having more than 2GB RAM was likely to get the desktop to freeze : sometimes the GPU was nVidia, sometimes Intel, so it seems the GPU does not make a difference, but the amount of RAM does make a difference.

Here are two sreenshots of the Lubuntu machines running in Virtualbox with 1536MB RAM. The first one is Wily 15.10 i386 with zram-config 0.1, the second screenshot is Lubuntu Trusty 14.04.3 x86_64 in the same Virtualbox, 1536MB RAM.

The consoles show the result with zram being loaded.
http://meets.free.fr/images/zram-in-wily.png
http://meets.free.fr/images/zram-in-trusty.png

Best regards,
Mélodie

[Lenin (gagarin)]

I even use zram-config on machines with 8 GB RAM (or more), and if you run software requiring memory, it's just fine. Is the problem you encounter still true for Ubuntu 18.04 or later?