Ubuntu
ubiquity package

If ubiquity disables swap during installation, system may become unusable

Bug #57763 reported by Oliver Gerlich
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
ubiquity (Baltix)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
ubiquity (Ubuntu)
Expired
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

If Ubuntu activates an existing swap partition during LiveCD boot, ubiquity disables the swap in the partitioning stage (at least when choosing "manual partitioning"). If there's not enough RAM available, disabling the swap partition will make the system unusable - even switching to a VT won't be possible.

This might be a generic Linux problem (disabling swap when there's not enough RAM available will probably "freeze" any Linux system), so I don't know if it would be possible to solve this in the kernel itself. If not, it might be possible to find a way to get partitioning done without disabling swap. Or, if the used memory doesn't fit into swap, display a warning message...

Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

I'm afraid I don't know of a way to do partitioning sensibly without disabling swap. Sure, you can do it if you just plan to install into pre-existing partitions, but ...

Changed in ubiquity:
importance: Untriaged → Wishlist
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Oliver Gerlich (ogerlich) wrote :

Then maybe it would be possible to check if ( (free memory) - (used swap) < 0 ) and give a warning if the swap contents won't fit into memory? In my case I had firefox open in the background; if I had been given a warning, I could have closed FF first and (probably) avoided the freeze.

Revision history for this message
Przemek K. (azrael) wrote :

closing unnecessary Baltix task

Changed in ubiquity (Baltix):
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson) wrote :

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Expired
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