livecd turns off swap freezing install process on low memory machines

[Joakim Larsson]

Binary package hint: ubuntu-live

I have tried for a while to install different brands of Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 on a 400 MHz iMac DV with 128 Mb RAM. I finally got it right but it was not out of the box. One problem was that the installer turned of the swap once I fugured out that one was needed to be able to install at all.

Workaround for this problem could be 'cp /bin/true /sbin/swapoff'
I think that the live cd has to consider the following:

- If no swap is present on lowmemory machines create (a temporary?) one before entering X, otherwise the system will be hogged by decompressing pages from the squashfs on the CD and freeze doing this.

- The installer should not do a swapoff but also be able to resuse the swap partition and even not consider to initialize the swap if it is used already.

My workaround resulted in creating a new swap so now I have two.

[Martin Bergner (martin-bergner)]

Is this similar to bug #40788?

[Joakim Larsson (joakim-bildrulle)]

It is similar only that it seems to inhibit installation differentelly. My workaround is also working so it is indeed possible to change the partition table having the swap in use. Maybe I was just lucky. The installer should prepare the partitions in text mode prior going X as a last resort.

Should I move the info to the other bug? How do I do that?

[Martin Bergner (martin-bergner)]

I will mark your bug a duplicate of the other one and you can just post a small comment regarding your problem there.

[Joakim Larsson (joakim-bildrulle)]

Ok, I put the info there aswell. Accidently I also clicked a button at the top saying "To be fixed here aswell" and do not know how to restore that, sorry.

[Martin Bergner (martin-bergner)]

Done, the next time, click on the blue link in the table, and change the status to rejected