Bug 727403

Summary: low RAM gives zombie installer with bad font for text dialog boxes
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: John Reiser <jreiser>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: rawhideCC: anaconda-maint-list, jonathan, vanmeeuwen+fedora
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2011-12-21 17:53:45 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:

Description John Reiser 2011-08-02 03:46:58 UTC 
Description of problem: Attempting an install from DVD (F-16 alpha TC1) with not enough RAM (512MB instead of advertised minimum 768MB) gives an error message whose text dialog box has the wrong fonts, and an installer that is not live but not dead either.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
anaconda-16.14

How reproducible: every time


Steps to Reproduce:
1. append " mem=512m" to the kernel boot command line
2.
3.
  
Actual results: Text dialog box with content "Error: Fedora requires 768MB of memory, to install, but you only have 512MB. [OK]" and the box is outlined in strange characters.  The cells along horizontal edges have capital A with diaresis.  The cells along vertical edges have superscript 3 (as in mathematical "cubed").

After acknowledging the message with <SPACE>, then there is no exit, and no abort.  Console switching (Ctrl-F2, etc.) works, and the shell on VT2 still works.  the 'top' status program shows low CPU usage, and nothing remarkable happening.

Expected results: Edge cells of dialog box are formed with line-drawing characters (vertical bar '|', minus '-', underscore '_', etc.)  The English should be improved to "Fedora requires 768MB of memory to install, but you have only 512MB."

The main installer activity should give some sign of termination (but shell on VT2, and logs on other screens, should persist.)

Additional info:  This Bugzilla form has no choice for "16" as Version, so I picked "rawhide".
Comment 1 Chris Lumens 2011-08-18 21:14:35 UTC 
Yeah, text mode is known to occassionally look like crap.  When you hit this situation, can you jump over to tty4 and see if we've been OOM killed?
Comment 2 John Reiser 2011-08-19 02:42:16 UTC 
In this situation (booting with " mem=512m" from Fedora 16 Alpha x86_64 DVD (RC5)), then on VT4 all lines [screen is 66 text lines tall] are related to hardware enumeration (VGA and SATA), except the last two lines are:
-----
 WARNING: kernel [  20.14...] modprobe used greatest stack depth:3088 bytes left
 WARNING: kernel [  22.63...] hotplug (812):/proc/812/oom_adj is deprecated, please use /proc/812/oom_score_adj instead.
-----
So perhaps the OOM killer did hit something, although I see no explicit notice.
Comment 3 Chris Lumens 2011-12-21 17:53:45 UTC 
These dialogs are on the way out (both because we're killing loader, and because we're working on a new and better text UI), so I don't think it's too likely we will be putting in any work here.