Feisty and Gutsy ubiquity installer is unusable with 256MB RAM

Bug #114599 reported by Gavin McCullagh
6
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
ubiquity (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

As I understand it the minimum requirements for installation using ubiquity are 256MB RAM.

On a Dell Latitude L400 (700MHz mobile P3) with 256MB RAM, the Live CD boots up but neither firefox nor the installer are remotely usable. I waited for well over an hour for the installer window to even come up before giving up and using the alternate.

The only other thing that might be causing issues is that the L400 uses an external CDROM (IDE not USB) which may be quite slow. All L400s come with this type of cdrom.

I'm unclear if the installer should be able to boot on this machine or if the minimum requirements should be higher in this case?

Revision history for this message
Gavin McCullagh (gmccullagh) wrote :

I should've pointed out that this was the Feisty Fawn i386 Ubuntu install CD.

Revision history for this message
David Malone (dwmalone) wrote :

I've seen something similar on a machine with 256MB of ram using the 7.04 install CD. It does not produce a running system dependably, and the only time I've managed to get it to run the installer, it took ~30 minutes to respond to me clicking "OK" to select English as a language, and after several subsequent hours I still hadn't managed to select a city and hit OK. It seems the requirements for running the graphical installer is substantially over the 192MB of ram listed in the system requirements.

Revision history for this message
jhansonxi (jhansonxi) wrote :

This may be a duplicate of Bug #45646 but reporter should verify that 256MB of RAM is actually available to the LiveCD. Many laptops share memory with the video controller and often 16-64MB may be unavailable.

Revision history for this message
Gavin McCullagh (gmccullagh) wrote : Re: [Bug 114599] Re: Ubiquity installer is unusable on Dell Latitude L400 with 256MB RAM
Download full text (37.7 KiB)

Hi,

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007, jhansonxi wrote:

> This may be a duplicate of Bug #45646 but reporter should verify that
> 256MB of RAM is actually available to the LiveCD. Many laptops share
> memory with the video controller and often 16-64MB may be unavailable.

I'm not sure how to answer this precisely. Having rooted through the BIOS,
there's no way to configure shared video RAM. Not to say it's not shared,
I'm just not sure how to determine if it is and how much it is.

However, (with gutsy installed to disk via the alternative feisty
installer), I can tell you:

gavinmc@tilly:~$ free
             total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 255928 251840 4088 0 1552 78688
-/+ buffers/cache: 171600 84328
Swap: 498004 20748 477256

but I'm not sure if that takes into account shared ram.

I'll attach the Xorg log which does give some memory information too. I
note in particular:

(WW) ATI(0): DRI static buffer allocation failed -- need at least 7680 kB video memory

and the fact that I can't get more than 1024x768 which suggests to me that
I probably have <8MB video RAM, whether shared or not.

Gavin

X Window System Version 1.3.0
Release Date: 19 April 2007
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 1.3
Build Operating System: Linux Ubuntu (xorg-server 2:1.3.0.0.dfsg-12ubuntu5)
Current Operating System: Linux tilly 2.6.23-rc4 #1 SMP Sat Sep 15 23:41:59 IST 2007 i686
Build Date: 19 September 2007
 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
 to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
 (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
 (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sun Sep 23 11:58:16 2007
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(==) ServerLayout "Default Layout"
(**) |-->Screen "Default Screen" (0)
(**) | |-->Monitor "Generic Monitor"
(**) | |-->Device "ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x"
(**) |-->Input Device "Generic Keyboard"
(**) |-->Input Device "Configured Mouse"
(**) |-->Input Device "stylus"
(**) |-->Input Device "cursor"
(**) |-->Input Device "eraser"
(**) |-->Input Device "Synaptics Touchpad"
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist.
 Entry deleted from font path.
(WW) Including the default font path /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType.
(**) FontPath set to:
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,
 /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,
 /usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,
 /usr/sh...

Revision history for this message
jhansonxi (jhansonxi) wrote : Re: Ubiquity installer is unusable on Dell Latitude L400 with 256MB RAM

The BIOS may indicate it on the POST summary screen if it has one but it looks like it has 4MB dedicated (not shared) according to the log and Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Latitude
The only way to verify if it's the same bug is to try again with the LiveCD and more RAM if you can add it. Also may try killing the deskbar applet as per Bug $105682 (which may be another duplicate).

Revision history for this message
Gavin McCullagh (gmccullagh) wrote : Re: [Bug 114599] Re: Ubiquity installer is unusable on Dell Latitude L400 with 256MB RAM

Hi,

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007, jhansonxi wrote:

> The BIOS may indicate it on the POST summary screen if it has one but it
> looks like it has 4MB dedicated (not shared) according to the log and
> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Latitude

> The only way to verify if it's the same bug is to try again with the
> LiveCD and more RAM if you can add it. Also may try killing the deskbar
> applet as per Bug $105682 (which may be another duplicate).

I can't add any more RAM.

 http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Latitude%20L400%20Series

I might be able to try the live cd at some point, I guess. I should point
out that unlike Bug 105682, this was feisty not gutsy. The tracker will
likely only exacerbate this further in gutsy.

Gavin

Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote : Re: Ubiquity installer is unusable on Dell Latitude L400 with 256MB RAM

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. With Hardy Heron there is a now a boot option on the Live CD to "Install Ubuntu" that starts ubiquity without launching a full desktop environment. I have tested this using 256M of memory and the installer worked well for me. However, it would be great if you could test this also and report back your results. You can learn more about Hardy Heron at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ . Thanks in advance.

Changed in ubiquity:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

I am going to go ahead and mark this as "Fix Released" as our testing indicates it is possible to install Hardy Heron with 256MB of RAM.

Changed in ubiquity:
status: Incomplete → Fix Released
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