Bug 460882 – sys-kernel/genkernel doesn't create initramfs file - * ERROR: Compression (/usr/bin/xz -e --check=none -z -f -9) failed

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

[Description Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-09 08:02:27 UTC]

I started genkernel --menuconfig all, only difference - i added Device Drivers/Real Time Clock, then i started compiling.
All compiles perfectly (kernel/modules), but initramfs file is not created. A log with error is attached.

Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-09 08:04:17 UTC]

Created attachment 341380 [details]
emerge --info

[Comment 2 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-09 08:04:31 UTC]

Created attachment 341382 [details]
genkernel.log

[Comment 3 Tom Wijsman (TomWij) (RETIRED) 2013-03-09 12:30:32 UTC]

Is xz present on your system?

[Comment 4 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-09 13:35:04 UTC]

Yes, when i type xz, it shows

xz: Compressed data cannot be written to a terminal
xz: Try 'xz --help' for more information

[Comment 5 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-09 13:51:39 UTC]

May be this is important, i don't know, i run genkernel under ssh session, with screen program.

[Comment 6 Borislav Milanovic 2013-03-16 22:28:54 UTC]

Same problem here,

I try to install a new Gentoo system on a really old laptop.
Minimal DVD -> mount everything, chroot, emerge everything and
'genkernel all' compiles until the end but exits with an error

ERROR: Compression (/usr/bin/xz -e --check=none -z -f -9) failed


xz is reinstalled from repository, but gives same message
as Vladimir:

> /usr/bin/xz
xz: Compressed data cannot be written to a terminal
xz: Try 'xz --help' for more information

[Comment 7 Xake 2013-03-17 20:00:52 UTC]

Could you please try again, but adding --loglevel=5 to the command, and post the log generated from that?

[Comment 8 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-18 14:03:18 UTC]

Created attachment 342532 [details]
New genkernel.log

[Comment 9 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-25 06:33:37 UTC]

Tried to emerge old kernel (3.0.something) - still not compiles. Same error.

[Comment 10 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-25 06:55:32 UTC]

Well, seems i have resolved an issue. I run only

genkernel initramfs

And it says:
/usr/bin/xz /var/tmp/genkernel/initramfs-3.7.10-gentoo: could not allocate memory

I looked at compression command line:
/usr/bin/xz -e --check=none -z -f -9 /var/tmp/genkernel/initramfs-3.7.10-gentoo

Well, i have 370MB of RAM. But it is not sufficient. But why -9 (best compression)? I removed -9, and all worked fine. I need only to copy initramfs to /boot (and rename it). May be one can use --memlimit option.

So, 370MB now is not sufficient to compile Linux Kernel, because of this xz option.

Question - can we add some genkernel option to limit memory, used by xz? It's annoying to copy/pack initramfs each time.

[Comment 11 Sergey Popov (RETIRED) 2013-03-25 06:56:43 UTC]

Confirming this issue.

web ~ # eix xz-utils -c
[I] app-arch/xz-utils (5.0.4-r1@18.02.2013): utils for managing LZMA compressed files
web ~ # eix genkernel -c
[I] sys-kernel/genkernel (3.4.45@18.02.2013): Gentoo automatic kernel building scripts

I have 1G memory on server and still have 'cannot allocate memory' from xz

[Comment 12 Xake 2013-03-25 08:02:53 UTC]

It is not compiling the kernel that is limited, it is compressing the initramfs.

I think I should take a look into this, I think we may need to have defaults for the compresor like now, but we should really let the user has a possiblity to pass their own options to the compressor.

[Comment 13 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-25 08:23:53 UTC]

Agreed.

[Comment 14 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-03-25 08:43:56 UTC]

By the way, if you will make a way to do so, don't forget to write about it in Installation Handbook. I think, this is related to installation to old computers.

[Comment 15 Borislav Milanovic 2013-03-30 12:27:11 UTC]

Haaaaa,

did you forget to edit your /etc/fstab and put in your SWAP partition?

> swapon /dev/sda2
> genkernel initramfs

solved it for me.
No more out of memory error.


But your solution without the compression level worked also very well.


Regards,
Boris

[Comment 16 Vladimir Romanov (RETIRED) 2013-04-15 04:06:36 UTC]

Well, my swap partition is 150Mb, and it is activated. May be 300M+150M is still not enough, i don't know.

[Comment 17 Craig Andrews 2013-05-02 00:48:10 UTC]

I'm seeing this same problem on my system, and I have 4GB of swap.

# swapon -s
Filename                                Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/zram0                              partition       511996  374008  16383
/dev/zram1                              partition       511996  373632  16383
/dev/zram2                              partition       511996  373940  16383
/dev/zram3                              partition       511996  373328  16383
/dev/dm-3                               partition       966652  110612  -1
/dev/dm-4                               partition       966652  112924  -2

[Comment 18 Robin Johnson 2016-01-24 06:02:49 UTC]

I can't reproduce this even on a VM with only 256MB of ram and no swap.
If you still have an issue, patch in setting XZ_DEFAULTS.

Eg:
XZ_DEFAULTS=--memlimit=150MiB.

Or re-open, and we'll add the ability to tweak it more; the xz manpage does describe how much memory is used by the presets like -9 (674MiB for compression)