Description of problem: Installing RHEL 4.8 on the z9 LPAR. The default partition for swap is 4GB. Leaving ~3GB for a RHEL installation. For most customers this is not enough to create a useful install. Its likely to create confusion as they will encounter the space shortage error and not realize that the swap size is causing the problem. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 seems to have a saner set of defaults for a single DASD System z image. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Using the same hardware configuration, although doing a 31 bit install, the swap is a more resonable 1984MB Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: On a z/VM system with 3GB of memory the swap file size is 4.5GB. CP Q STOR STORAGE = 3G Partitioning ├────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Device Start End Size (M Type Mount Point │ │ VG VolGroup00 6912 VolGroup # │ │ LV LogVol01 4544 swap ▒ │ │ LV LogVol00 2368 ext3 / ▒ │ │ /dev/dasda ▒ │ │ dasda1 2 1139 99 ext3 /boot ▒ │ │ dasda2 1139 80128 6942 physical v ▒ │ │ This value must be reset in order to do an install on a Mod 6 DASD device (6.8GB). This does not seem like a reasonable swap file size. When 2GB of memory is used the swap file size is set to 4GB. Partitioning ├────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Device Start End Size (M Type Mount Point │ │ VG VolGroup00 6912 VolGroup # │ │ LV LogVol01 4000 swap ▒ │ │ LV LogVol00 2912 ext3 / ▒ │ │ /dev/dasda ▒ │ │ dasda1 2 1139 99 ext3 /boot ▒ │ │ dasda2 1139 80128 6942 physical v ▒ │ │ When installing a 31 bit system on a system with 2GB of memory the swap file size is 1.9GB. Partitioning ├────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Device Start End Size (M Type Mount Point │ │ VG VolGroup00 6912 VolGroup # │ │ LV LogVol00 4928 ext3 / ▒ │ │ LV LogVol01 1984 swap ▒ │ │ /dev/dasda ▒ │ │ dasda1 2 1139 99 ext3 /boot ▒ │ │ dasda2 1139 80128 6942 physical v ▒ │ │ RHEL4.7 does the same thing as RHEL4.8 ┌────────────────────────────┤ Partitioning ├────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Device Start End Size (M Type Mount Point │ │ VG VolGroup00 6880 VolGroup # │ │ LV LogVol00 2304 ext3 / ▒ │ │ LV LogVol01 4576 swap ▒ │ │ /dev/dasda ▒ │ │ dasda1 2 1139 99 ext3 /boot ▒ │ │ dasda2 1139 80128 6942 physical v ▒ │ │ ▒ │ RHEL4.6 used a much smaller swap file size on a system with 3GB of memory. ┌────────────────────────────┤ Partitioning │ │ │ Device Start End Size (M Type Mount Point │ │ VG VolGroup00 6880 VolGroup # │ │ LV LogVol00 4864 ext3 / ▒ │ │ LV LogVol01 1984 swap ▒ │ │ /dev/dasda ▒ │ │ dasda1 2 1139 99 ext3 /boot ▒ │ │ dasda2 1139 80128 6942 physical v ▒ │ │ ▒ │ Additional info: It seems that the problem changed somewhere around 4.7.
*** Bug 501628 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is likely due to 09d54bb4e56a618e09bc5832a68d738166ec09b7, which brought anaconda in line with the RHEL documentation. It states that if you have more than 2 GB of memory, the suggested swap size is 2 GB + the amount of memory in the system. We are unlikely to change this in RHEL4 or RHEL5 again given the amount of discussion that has taken place over it. As this is just the swap recommendation and can be overruled by the user relatively easily, I don't see this as anything that is going to get fixed in a RHEL4 update release.