On Sun, Feb 18, 2007 at 08:18:45PM +0100, Pablo Ripolles wrote: > >I haven't looked at the low-memory mode menu in quite some time. Do you > >have the option at this point to mount swap space? That's the only way > >you're going to get enough virtual memory to be able to continue the > >install > >of etch;
> when i boot using the option "priority=low" i have access to a reduced > menu. to have access to the augmented menu where the disk options are, > i need to execute first "Detect and mount CD-ROM" and second "Load > installer components from CD". in the former entry i have the option to > exclude a number of unnecessary modules from being loaded which i do. Which modules have you loaded at this point? Probably a lot more of these are "unnecessary" then you would think -- to minimize your memory consumption (which is the point of having a low-memory mode after all), you should select *only* those installer components that are needed to get you to the next stage, i.e., mounting swap space. So you definitely shouldn't be loading network drivers at this point, but instead wait until swap is loaded for that. Then, once swap is activated, you can go back to the list of installer components for a second pass. > > there's certainly no way that the installer's memory requirements > >on alpha are going to be lowered for etch. > i see it this way. it's true that 64MB of memory is nowadays very > little. i understand that every new version has got higher requirements > than previous ones (3.1 worked great!) . but: > -given the fact that it's said that 64MB is enough, then it should be > enough. See above for the contortions that are implied by lowmem mode. It may still be enough, if you're willing to work for it. > -given the fact that alpha is an almost extinguished architecture and > that it is (quite!) difficult to get working memory upgrades for those > machines, then the lower the memory requirements the better. i could > agree with your statement for the i386 architecture... 64MB is a small amount of memory for anything on i386 today; but alpha has always required *more* memory than i386 to do the same task, because of the larger pointer sizes contributing to larger object sizes and greater memory usage. It is plainly unrealistic for the memory requirements for the installer on alpha to ever be less than they are on i386. And I'm the only developer actively working on the Debian installer for alpha, and lowmem mode isn't a use case of direct importance to me. (My alpha has 384MB of real memory; I can't imagine trying to do anything useful with 64MB in an alpha running etch.) Even if I were inclined to put a lot of effort into improving lowmem on alpha, it's unlikely that many of the necessary changes would be suitable for inclusion in etch due to the timeline. To the extent that Debian helps make old, low-end hardware useful, I'm proud of Debian and happy for our users; but I'm not going to strain my back trying to turn back the hands of time. > -given the fact that the warning of the "low memory mode" advices the > administrator to allocate swap space as soon as possible, then doing it > so at the very first opportunity should be possible. If you can't get to the point of activating swap space even with the further hints above, please reply back and I'll see if we can't get this documented in the alpha install manual for etch. Thanks, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
