Description of problem: It looks like the problem described in #109389 and #119699, which plagued FC1 and FC2, but wasn't there in FC3, is back, albeit in a milder fashion: Anaconda spontaneously reboots during the installation on a machine with 128 MB of RAM (after working around #160660, that is). Unlike my experiences with FC2, it didn't happen after just 3 or 4 packages, though, but only after something like 200-500 packages, allowing me to complete the upgrade (FC3->FC4) installation with 2 restarts. (If this is of any help, the first crash was after about 200 packages during an apmd upgrade, and the second one after about 500 packages (NOT counting the 200 ones from before) during a kdeadmin upgrade.) Unfortunately, I couldn't see the error messages because it had already rebooted when I checked. I doubt they would be of any help anyway, the ones in #109389 and #119699 weren't really. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Anaconda as shipped on FC4-i386-disc1.iso. How reproducible: No idea. Maybe easily, maybe there's some randomness involved. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Take a machine with only 128 MB of RAM. 2. Install FC3. This should work fine, at least it did for me. 3. Fetch the 4 FC4 CD ISOs. 4. Enter the FC4 installer into GRUB. 5. Use this for a HD install, using my workaround for #160660. 6. Wait for Anaconda to install a few hundred packages and watch it crash. Actual results: Anaconda spontaneously reboots. Expected results: Installation completes.
re you doing a text or graphical upgrade?
Text. With 128 MB, "Graphical installation is not available." according to Anaconda.
I have had this problem with Anaconda in Yellow Dog Linux on an iMac with 96 MB of RAM. YDL 3 installed fine, but YDL 4 has this same bug. Now Fedora Core's Anaconda has given me the message that it "Cannot allocate memory" before the installation had really begun.
This report targets the FC3 or FC4 products, which have now been EOL'd. Could you please check that it still applies to a current Fedora release, and either update the target product or close it ? Thanks.
FC5 Anaconda still locked up (but didn't reboot by itself) when upgrading my laptop, which has 160 MB RAM. It did that when reading in the metadata for a new ISO (from the HD), however, not during a transaction, so at least there was no duplicate package pollution. Interestingly, it displayed a graphical updater, even though the minimum for graphical installs is supposedly 192 MB. That might have been part of the problem. I didn't test the FC6 Anaconda with that laptop due to my bad experiences with previous versions, so I honestly don't know how that behaves. My desktop computer now has 1 GB of RAM. Now if nobody is even trying to use Anaconda with so few RAM these days, then I'd suggest just bumping the requirements in the release notes so no false expectations are being set.
Trying again to clear needinfo...
I'm going to go ahead and mark this as "cantfix" for FC4 at least. For specific issues with the latest anaconda I think it'll be most helpful to file a new bug.