I have just installed Debian (now Woody, upgraded from Potato). (Acorn riscpc, 32MB, 10GB, SA110). Unfortunately dpkg seems to be semi-broken; it crashes whenever I try to install a large deb like xserver-xfree86 or xfonts-base. Then the console freezes completely and won't die until I kill the login (or reboot). Even then the dpkg processes continue to run, and as a result when I reboot it says / is still busy...
For example: burr:/var/cache/apt/archives# dpkg -i xserver-xfree86_4.0.3-4_arm.deb Selecting previously deselected package xserver-xfree86. (Reading database ... 6991 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking xserver-xfree86 (from xserver-xfree86_4.0.3-4_arm.deb) ... then nothing. A ps aux reveals USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1 0.1 1.8 1340 564 ? S 17:53 0:01 init root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 17:53 0:00 [swapper] root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 17:53 0:00 [kflushd] root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 17:53 0:00 [kupdate] root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 17:53 0:00 [kswapd] root 6 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 17:53 0:00 [keventd] root 125 0.0 2.1 1448 664 ? S 17:54 0:00 /sbin/syslogd root 128 0.0 2.6 1620 820 ? S 17:54 0:00 /sbin/klogd root 134 0.2 1.6 1400 528 ? S 17:54 0:02 /usr/sbin/gpm -m /dev/mouse -t bm root 139 0.0 1.7 1396 552 ? S 17:54 0:00 /usr/sbin/inetd root 149 0.1 4.0 3040 1260 ? S 17:54 0:01 /usr/sbin/sshd david 153 0.0 4.6 2680 1432 tty1 S 17:54 0:00 -bash root 154 0.1 4.8 2712 1508 tty2 S 17:54 0:01 -bash root 155 0.1 4.7 2704 1472 tty3 S 17:54 0:01 -bash root 156 0.0 4.8 2712 1500 tty4 S 17:54 0:00 -bash david 157 0.0 4.6 2680 1436 tty5 S 17:54 0:00 -bash root 158 0.0 1.6 1324 528 tty6 S 17:54 0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty6 root 175 0.0 6.4 2884 1996 tty2 D 17:56 0:00 dpkg -i xserver-xfree86_4.0.3-4_arm.deb root 182 0.0 0.0 0 0 tty2 Z 17:56 0:00 [dpkg-deb <defunct>] root 207 1.1 5.2 3364 1624 tty3 S 18:02 0:04 ssh david stasis root 213 0.2 6.4 2884 1996 tty4 D 18:04 0:00 dpkg -i xserver-xfree86_4.0.3-4_arm.deb root 220 0.0 0.0 0 0 tty4 Z 18:04 0:00 [dpkg-deb <defunct>] root 223 0.2 4.8 2712 1508 tty1 S 18:04 0:00 -su root 230 0.2 6.3 2884 1988 tty1 D 18:05 0:00 dpkg -i xserver-xfree86_4.0.3-4_arm.deb root 237 0.0 1.6 1440 520 tty1 S 18:05 0:00 dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile xserver-xfree86_4.0.3-4_arm.deb root 238 0.0 1.8 1476 576 tty1 S 18:05 0:00 dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile xserver-xfree86_4.0.3-4_arm.deb root 239 0.0 2.0 1512 624 tty1 S 18:05 0:00 dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile xserver-xfree86_4.0.3-4_arm.deb david 240 0.0 3.6 3096 1136 tty5 R 18:08 0:00 ps aux david 241 0.0 2.2 1720 700 tty5 S 18:08 0:00 less (You can see that I had three attempts to install the file; each completely hung). Earlier, when I was trying to install some other packages (perl, for instance) it was doing the same thing, but stopped when I realised that I had forgotten to enable the swap space (it is an sa110 with only 32MB RAM). But swap is definitely activated now, and it isn't working for things like xserver-xfree86. Can anyone suggest how to get dpkg to work (i.e. not crash?) It's extremely frustrating... Many thanks, David Joy.
