do-release-upgrade kernel selection could be better

[LaMont Jones]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Upgrading a low-end box from hardy with 2.6.24-17-server to lucid, do-release-upgrade chose linux-generic-pae as the kernel of choice.

The box in question is a PII/233 with 192MB of RAM (and 6GB of hard drive). Once I fired that kernel and switched to linux-386, the machine is back to not swapping constantly due to memory pressure.

I'm not sure where the right trade-off point for choosing linux-386 over linux-generic-pae is, but this box is definitely past that transition.

Please consider better kernel selection.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

The component "base-installer" helps the upgrader with the kernel selection. Could you please attach /var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log to see what it selected?

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

And also /proc/cpuinfo and grep '^MemTotal:[[:space:]]*' /proc/meminfo

[LaMont Jones (lamont)]

(yes, it's very old hardware)

+printers 301 : grep '^MemTotal:[[:space:]]*' /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 186140 kB
+printers 302 : cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 3
model name : Pentium II (Klamath)
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 232.988
cache size : 512 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov mmx up
bogomips : 465.97
clflush size : 32
cache_alignment : 32
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Looks like base-installer suggested the following:

2010-03-20 22:17:02,931 DEBUG ./get_kernel_list.sh returns: ['linux-generic', 'linux-image-generic', 'linux-virtual', 'linux-image-virtual', 'linux-rt', 'linux-image-rt', 'linux-generic-pae', 'linux-image-generic-pae', 'linux-xen', 'linux-image-xen', 'linux-386', 'linux-image-386']

It should probably move -386 up for a machine like this.