Description of problem: Apparently the installer insists on at least 512MB RAM for graphical install from DVD on i686. At least, anaconda refuses 383MB and falls back to text mode. [Text mode install lacks many features and requires much higher user knowledge to achieve success.] In contrast, the Wiki says that 256MB is the recommended minimum RAM for graphical operation on Fedora *12*: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/HardwareOverview#Processor_and_memory_requirements_for_x86_Architectures I ran a (self-composed) DVD install of yesterday's rawhide on a 4GB machine, and at the end of install the memory usage of the large processes totalled only 225MB: F UID PID PPID PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TTY TIME COMMAND 4 0 294 85 20 0 192748 145012 poll_s S+ tty1 8:46 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/anaconda --stage2 cdrom:///dev/sr0:/mnt/stage2 --graphical - 4 0 348 294 20 0 31968 12532 poll_s Ss+ tty6 0:34 Xorg -br -logfile /tmp/X.log :1 vt6 -s 1440 -ac -nolisten tcp -dpi 96 Therefore it is hard to understand anaconda's refusal to install with 384MB, and even harder to comprehend a 512MB minimum requirment for RAM. Why is the requirement so big? What are the two leading factors which prevent success with less RAM, and how low would the requirement be if those factors were ameliorated? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda-12.26 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Attempt DVD install on i686 with 384MB RAM (383MB available) 2. Perform DVD install on i686 with 4GB RAM; at finish, switch to VT2 and ask "ps axl" 3. Actual results: 384MB: "You do not have enough RAM for graphical install. Falling back to text mode." 4GB: success with main python anaconda process using only 193MB, X server using only 32MB. Expected results: Successful graphical install in same memory as suggested minimum RAM for graphics (currently 256MB on i686; and there is no problem in daily operation with only 384MB RAM. [It's not zippy, but it's quite usable, particularly after prelink has run once.]) Additional info:
You can't simply use the same requirements as the running system for anaconda, though, because anaconda has additional restrictions for the environment it must run under. For starters, anaconda has the whole stage2 environment stored in memory. There's simply nowhere else for it to go. That adds well over 100 MB to the requirements. You'd only be able to decrease the memory requirements if you were able to decrease the size of the stage2 image, and software doesn't seem to be getting smaller over time. If the memory requirements are not well enough explained, that sounds like a problem in the installation guide.
(In reply to comment #1) > For starters, anaconda has the whole stage2 environment stored > in memory. There's simply nowhere else for it to go. That adds well over 100 > MB to the requirements. It seems to me that stage2 could be [effectively] stored in different places during different stages of install. For example, what about putting stage2 into a RAM-resident filesystem that can be paged to disk (such as tmpfs?) Then most of the requirement for 130MB RAM for stage2 "disappears" as soon as there is paging space ("swap space.") Swap space appears before package install, which is the big consumer of RAM. In Fedora 9 and 10 the anaconda python process itself grew to many hundreds of megabytes, which became an effective limit due to page thrashing on machines with small RAM. Now the anaconda python process behaves better (see data in Description.)
The install guide - at least for the past couple of iterations referred the 'minimum memory' issue to the Release Notes, and the IG has nothing other than a pointer there. Indeed the link you reference above is a beat location for the Release Notes, so I'm changing the componet to RN. Thanks
529401 includes a detailed discussion of why the minimums are too SMALL. Notes includes an admonition with some weasel words.
*** Bug 516629 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***