Bug 53945 – Install of stage1 using minimal livecd dies during bootstrap with out-of-memory errors compiling glibc. Subsequent memtest shows no errors an the computer in question uses 256MB of Crucial SDRAM.

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Release Media

[Description john lowell 2004-06-14 22:54:32 UTC]

After experiencing repeated freezes of the liveCD at Dell laptop detection using the gentoo kernel, I was able to get a successful start using the smp kernel, this on a single CPU box. Well into the bootstrap, glibc dies with Out Of Memory errors. While this computer is aging its not on it's last legs. I've done 1.4 installs from stage 1 without trouble previously. I've run memtest and get no errors; the memory is branded - Crucial - and there's 256MB of it. I'm a little surprized by this, frankly. 

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Boot liveCD and go into install
2.Start bootstrap script and wade into the first wave of compiling
3.Glibc build dies with out of memory errors

Actual Results:  
I got out of memory errors

Expected Results:  
Finished compiling glibc and moved on with the next package

[Comment 1 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) 2004-06-15 07:09:55 UTC]

Did you forget to enable your swap?

What do you get if you run "top" or "free" from outside the chroot?

[Comment 2 john lowell 2004-06-15 19:07:52 UTC]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the rather prompt attention.

Did I forget to run swapon /dev/hda4? Not likely, but possible. Anything is possible.

Please find below the output of free run from outside the chrooted environment:             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem:        253860      28168     225692          0       4992      13368
-/+ buffers/cache:       9808     244052
Swap:            0          0          0

Now I would hasten to point out that when ran this command I did so after simply having booted up in to the smp kernel on the same livecd I used originally. I'd had to use the smp kernel because the gentoo kernel hung at Dell laptop, a well known problem which I learned today had been fixed with a new test cd. But I used the old cd to preserve the test's integrity. I went no further into the install than the first step, configuring the network. It was at that point that I ran "free". Swap had not been activated. As you can see, the system has lots of memory available and, when activated, a 500MB swap partition. 

I have three other boxes on this network, all now with 2004.1 installs. None has more memory than this aging PII box. Its to act as a webserver once I get 2004.1 installed.

I'll look for your next message.

Regards,

jlowell

[Comment 3 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) 2004-06-16 05:25:48 UTC]

It honestly seems like you had forgotten to swapon.  256MB is nowhere near enough to bootstrap without swap.  With the additional 500MB swap, everything would be peachy.  Would you try again ensuring to swapon, and also, if that fails, try my test CD at http://dev.gentoo.org/~wolf31o2/releng (be sure to modprobe ide-disk, known bug to be fixed in -test4 release) and report on it, too, since it is the proving grounds for 2004.2 technologies.

[Comment 4 john lowell 2004-06-25 19:23:27 UTC]

Hello Chris,

Sorry to be so slow to reply. Carefully reviewing the steps I took during the install, I think I may have found a misstep I'd taken which may or may not have played a role in the out of memory problem I experienced. Step 5e calls for the editing of /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf. It is possible that I may have mistakenly edited /etc/make.conf instead, something which can happen when you get to know the installation process so well that you assume too much about it when you're doing it. In any case, a reinstall done with consciousness of this difference resulted in success. I really can't say whether there may be a connection here.

jlowell

[Comment 5 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) 2004-06-26 06:32:51 UTC]

No problem... I'm just glad to hear that it is working now...

[Comment 6 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) 2005-03-25 11:24:17 UTC]

Moving these so we can remove the "Install CD" component from "Gentoo Linux".

I apologize to everyone for this spam, but according to the bugzilla developers,
this is the only reasonable way to do this.