I tried throwing the 2007.0 Live CD into an ancient box to build a quickie custom one-off box... Alas, at 128 M RAM, it would seem that the installer tries to copy WAY too much stuff to tmpfs, and I get a zillion "cp" errors about not enough space, and then it just sorta stops... Hopefully the min install CD is more lightweight and suitable, but it would be Really Nifty if the Live CD handled the error better than just blindly running forward off the cliff... Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Pull a box out of the closet with only 128 M RAM Insert Live CD Actual Results: Many many cp errors Expected Results: Gentoo! You guys rock!!! I'm calling this "minor" as I assume nobody but me actually tries to build a box with only 128 M RAM these days... :-)
First, you people need to learn to distinguish between the LiveCD/DVD and "the installer". The LiveCD would function identically if the installer were not present. The installer is not involved in anything at all until you click the icon for it on the GNOME desktop. Now that that's out of my system... :P I guess something changed with what we copy to tmpfs in this release. For 2006.1, you could get into GNOME and run the installer (although, rather slowly due to swapping) with only 128MB memory. Should we handle this as a LiveCD bug or a docs bug (I believe it still says 128MB is the minimum)?
The min install CD worked fine, as a work-around for anybody else who runs into this. Requires network connection to download everything, and you'll want your biggest bandwidth available, but it does work.
(In reply to comment #1) > First, you people need to learn to distinguish between the LiveCD/DVD and "the > installer". The LiveCD would function identically if the installer were not > present. The installer is not involved in anything at all until you click the > icon for it on the GNOME desktop. Now that that's out of my system... :P Errrr. Sorry if I've mis-labeled things. I never even got anywhere near a Gnome desktop icon. Didn't even want to, really... > I guess something changed with what we copy to tmpfs in this release. For > 2006.1, you could get into GNOME and run the installer (although, rather slowly > due to swapping) with only 128MB memory. I dunno what you are talking about, but I never wanted anything more than command line installer. I even tried: gentoo nox nomraid nousb nofirewire nosata nosmp in the hopes of copying less stuff to tmpfs, since I knew I didn't have any hardware for all of those things and had no need for X to just install a minimal system. I really just wanted a kernel, cdrtools, and whatever package has 'record' in it, installed from a command line prompt with ncurses or similar, if that's on there. I don't even need sshd, really... But I couldn't even get as far as choosing what not to install. :-) > Should we handle this as a LiveCD bug or a docs bug (I believe it still says > 128MB is the minimum)? Actually, this minimum is way less than 128M: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/mips-requirements.xml Though if 2007.0 needs to make something more than 128M be the minimum, that's fine, for the Live CD. The min install CD over the 'net worked though, and seemed to go through a similar tmpfs setup, to this naive user. Maybe there's just some un-needed stuff in the Live CD tmpfs setup? I was rather hoping to use the Live CD though, to avoid having to suck everything down through the net. I suppose if I was a real geek, could have figured out a way to boot from the min CD, eject that, put in the Live CD, and use that as the source for kernel/module/package installation... I'm pretty sure it could be done, but I'd have spent more time finding out how than it took to just download the stuff anyway. And I didn't exactly sit there watching it download, so it wasn't time wasted anyway, eh? THANK YOU! I do appreciate you taking the time to translate my bug report into something useful -- I'm doing the best I can... :-)
(In reply to comment #3) > > Should we handle this as a LiveCD bug or a docs bug (I believe it still says > > 128MB is the minimum)? > > Actually, this minimum is way less than 128M: > http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/mips-requirements.xml You're referencing the MIPS requirements here, which are describing MIPS based boxes. Those boxes have other requirements than x86/AMD64 boxes (and specific release media built for them). What might work for further release is to only copy needed stuff into the tmpfs, i.e. if nox as boot option is selected no x-releated programs are copied to the tmpfs. Though i have no idea how to differ between basic needed programs and x11 related applications without querying the portage database - which would delay the boot process even more ...
Eh, it doesn't even work that way. AFAIK, the only stuff copied into the tmpfs is stuff that needs to be writable like /etc, /home/, and /root.
Don't forget /var, which is where lots of the stuff comes from. I honestly didn't test on 128MB, which I usually do. The problem is pretty simple. You need more RAM. The minimal CD works because ti has less contents in the affected directories. If you were to use the LiveDVD, the memory requirements would be even more. You could *try* using "gentoo unionfs" on the kernel command line, since that skips the tmpfs copying and uses unionfs, instead, which only copies things to RAM on-demand and as necessary. The unionfs support is 100% experimental and isn't guaranteed to work, but I am curious now if it would solve your problem.
(In reply to comment #6) > kernel command line, since that skips the tmpfs copying and uses unionfs, > instead, which only copies things to RAM on-demand and as necessary. The > unionfs support is 100% experimental and isn't guaranteed to work, but I am > curious now if it would solve your problem. The box in question is now in "Production" as a hi-tech (larf) recording studio at php|tek conference. Working great so far, unlike the wireless mics that flaked out in the middle of the first Keynote. :-( I'll give unionfs a try once the oh-so-expensive (read: obsolete and rare) hardware is freed up from its production use (this weekend). :-)
I gave the unionfs thing a quick test here in VMWare, and it failed with: mount: Mounting unionfs on /union failed: No such device Hopefully, your results will be different, but I somehow doubt it.
*** Bug 178863 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
It looks like 256MB is the new minimum. With 256MB, it looks like the tmpfs is 125MB (that's normal...approximately half of physical memory), and there is 105 used. A user with 128MB of memory would get a ~64MB tmpfs and 190MB of memory would give a ~95MB tmpfs....both too small.
Do you want me to bump the RAM requirements to 256MB in our handbooks? Both x86 & amd64 I guess.
Please do. I would like to keep this open, though, as a reminder to us to check the memory usage requirements on the next release and also to try our best to reduce them. While asking someone to have 256MB of RAM to run the LiveCD isn't completely out of the question, we should be able to do at least something about the memory requirements.
Done. FYI, I can reproduce the same problem with qemu: qemu -hda /qemu.img -cdrom livecd-i686-installer-2007.0.iso -m 128 -boot d qemu -hda /qemu.img -cdrom livecd-i686-installer-2007.0.iso -m 192 -boot d qemu -hda /qemu.img -cdrom livecd-i686-installer-2007.0.iso -m 256 -boot d Only the last one (w/256MB) boots. I can start the installer and partition my virtual hda. I didn't test any further. The minimal CD boots with 64MB, I didn't go further than boot prompt.
I have a Sony Vaio laptop. AMD XP 2000, 1.25 gig ram. The 2007.0 live-cd stalls at copying read-write image to tmpfs. I've tried nearly all possible boot options with the only change is how long it took to stall. The 2007.0 minimal boots fine. Is there anything I can try to get it working or tests I can do to figure out why it stalls?
Brian, this bug has nothing to do with your issue. Please file your own bug report or use the search feature to look for relevant bugs.
Can we call this one fixed since we changed the minimum required in the handbook?
(In reply to comment #16) > Can we call this one fixed since we changed the minimum required in the > handbook? > Fine by me, certainly. mailto:wolf31o2@gentoo.org Chris wanted to keep it open to make sure something got done with Testing as well though...
I booted the 2008.0 LiveCD in virtualbox with only 256MB assigned to the VM without issue.
