Description of problem: If I upgrade a machine with 128M from FC4 to FC5 it will fail with a cannot allocate memory error. I run the installer in text mode. If I manually switch console at an early stage and do a swapon /dev/hda2 the upgrade runs succesfully. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. Take a machine with 128M RAM 2. Install FC4 3. Upgrade to FC5 Actual results: Failure Expected results: The upgrade should succeed Additional info:
We used to do an early swap on for upgrades. Somehow, we appear to have lost that
Yeah, I replaced that functionality with an automatic online order to Crucial for 1024MB of memory for the user. The installer *should* be pausing to wait for that order, but I guess it isn't. I'll look in to this and see what we can do. Might just have to enable swap again.
Similar story here. However, in my case anaconda *did* mount the existing swap partition on /dev/hda5. But it wasn't big enough (128M) and still hit an out of memory condition midway through the install. My workaround was to switch to the Alt-F2 console and manually create a 128M swap file on /mnt/sysimage/tmp. This provides a total of 256M of swap which is apparently enough to allow the install to finish. (I saw "free" report at least 186M of swap used - not sure if that's the max)
I've tried upgrading another machine. This time it did in fact use the swap partition automatically. In fact, a manual swapon makes the installation fail. The difference between the two upgrades is that the first (i.e. where swap wasn't enabled) install was done from CD, and the second via NFS.
I've tried several times to do a FTP upgrade to no avail. After 12 hours, I get insufficient disk space. Could it be I don't have enough swap space. I currently have over 600 MB worth. Does anaconda need more?
OK, I've refreshed my iMac here with FC4 and started an FC5 upgrade from CD. The install has been running for hours now and all but 1.5MB of physical is reported as in-use as well as 138MB of swap. The install is at 33% complete and is still running, but the disk is really busy. This iMac has 128M of physical memory. I think that 128M is just not enough for a speedy install, but it will *probably* work. We bumped the minimum amount of RAM required for a GUI installation, so with 128M of memory your only option now is the text mode install. If you have more than 140000k of available memory, anaconda will not enable swap during installation. I'm thinking this limited should be increased because 128M of physical RAM and 128M of swap isn't enough. It's using right at our early swap requirement, so I'm thinking it should be bumped. I'll post again once this install finished or crashes.
I had same problem: my upgrade from FC4 to FC5 (with CDs and 256M RAM) froze while preparing transaction to install. In Bug 186090 a guy tells he has same problem, and has taken a screenshot: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=126404 I've fixed my problem by following the suggestion of comment #1 (just enabling my swap partition): 1. Just before clicking OK to begin the preparation of the transsacction, change to text mode: control+alt+F2. 2. See the number of the swap partition: # parted /dev/hda print | grep swap 4 157GB 158GB 946MB primaria linux-swap 3. Enable the swap partition: # swapon /dev/hda4 4. Go back to graphical mode: alt+F7 5. Click OK to install. Is there any way to explain this steps to people upgrading to FC5? Perhaps a warning in the download page and mirrors?
I've wasted an entire day on this problem. Took me a while to figure out what's going on. Fresh install with x86_64 on 256mb RAM, booted from USB stick with the DVD iso on a second hard drive. It locks up right at the package install screen, even before the "Preparing transaction" dialog comes up. Every time. If I quickly switch over to the text console before this happens, I can see that the OOM killer has kicked in. Once it killed the X server then mini-wm, and another time it killed anaconda then the X server. I tried setting up a swap partition, but it seems it doesn't actually do the partitioning until after the lockup point. So it doesn't help. I'm trying again with a pre-existing swap.
Nope, pre-existing swap doesn't help. It doesn't enable it soon enough. If I enable swap manually, I just get a dialog saying "Error enabling swap device hda5: Device or resource busy" and "Press OK to reboot your system". This is bogus. Completely totally bogus. I'm dead in the water.
I was able to successfully upgrade to FC5. There is no problem with anaconda. I just didn't have enough disk space for FC5 with my currents installed RPMS. By removing enough old and unnecessary RPMS I was able to successfully upgrade to FC5. See my last comment in Bug 186541 for details.
I'm marking this as a dupe of bug 186090. Please see the workarounds posted there. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 186090 ***