Out of memory error when running Live CD prevents installation from completing

[Scott Kitterman]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

I think this has happened twice in a row as my frist try to install full disk proved to be unbootable and I didn't get the reboot confirmation after the first try (wasn't paying attention). This time I got the installer crashed, file a bug message. I'll run apport collecct just after I file this. The crash was during or right after the step where it erases the swap file for security reasons.
---
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
LiveMediaBuild: Kubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110423)
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: ubiquity 2.6.10
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Tags: natty
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups:

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

apport information

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

apport information

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

apport information

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

apport information

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

apport information

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

apport information

[Evan (ev)]

Apr 23 05:43:51 ubuntu kernel: [ 2026.684429] Out of memory: Kill process 20913 (gtk-update-icon) score 96 or sacrifice child
Apr 23 05:43:51 ubuntu kernel: [ 2026.684442] Killed process 20913 (gtk-update-icon) total-vm:133580kB, anon-rss:126552kB, file-rss:1660kB
Apr 23 05:43:51 ubuntu ubiquity: Killed

So not entirely ubiquity's fault, but we should get to the bottom of what ate all your memory regardless.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

The target system for this install is a Dell Mini10v with 1GB of RAM, so it should be well above the minimum system requirements. Let me know what I can do to help.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

When I don't start the live session first and start installing directly, the install succeeds (but then I'm installing without internet). I tried it a couple of times watching top and didn't see anything spike in memory usage before it dies. This worked at Beta 2, so something recent started eating more memory.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

I'm confirming, there's another occurrence of this bug in bug 770865.

[Rudolf Meijering (skaapgif)]

I can confirm the same behaviour running a live usb instance of ubuntu 11.04 amd64. Ubuntu boots flawlessly, but running any process (firefox, libreoffice, apt-get) causes an "Out of memory: Kill process" error to occur and eventually the machine locks up. Unfortunately as my machine freezes and not even SysRq works I cannot provide more information.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I'm not sure how this got marked confirmed for oneiric as I only ever saw it on natty. Whatever it was, I'm pretty sure it's fixed for 11.10.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

I got it twice today with Ubuntu DVD amd64 20111007.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This bug and the duplicates were all reported against 11.04. Since the original submitter says this is not present for him in 11.10, please file a new bug report for issues in other releases, and include in the bug report:
 - the image you used
 - when you hit the OOM error
 - how much memory the system you're installing on has
 - if possible, dmesg output a process list from the affected system

There will always be some set of systems where you will hit an OOM error when trying to install using certain methods. In order for this to be an actionable bug report we need more precise information.