Fedora Minimal 36 installation on raspberry pi 2B

[Irene Diez]

Hello there,

I'm trying to install Fedora-Minimal-36-1.5.armhfp.raw on my raspberry pi 2B. Installation was a success but the device runs out of memory when trying to install anything via dnf and I get kicked out of the shell.

I've followed the installation instructions in https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/Raspberry_Pi#Manual, which specify that this model is supported since Fedora 29; so, is it there anything that I'm missing for Fedora to work?

Thanks,

Irene

[Ben Herrick]

Irene,

You may need to give microdnf a try, as DNF will use all of your 1GB of
RAM and get killed by the out-of-memory routines.

<code>
# rpm -
ivh http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/updates/36/Everything/armhfp/Packages/m/mic...
# sudo microdnf upgrade --refresh -y
</code>

There will be a move to DNF5, which will remove some of the memory
pressure and improve speed, but it's not scheduled until Fedora 39.

Please note that Fedora 36 is also the last release for ARMHFP (RPI
2B), if I recall correctly.

I hope this helps!

-Ben

On Fri, 2023-01-20 at 22:39 +0000, Irene Diez wrote:
> Hello there,
>
> I'm trying to install Fedora-Minimal-36-1.5.armhfp.raw on my
> raspberry pi 2B. Installation was a success but the device runs out
> of memory when trying to install anything via dnf and I get kicked
> out of the shell.
>
> I've followed the installation instructions in
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/Raspberry_Pi#Manual,
> which specify that this model is supported since Fedora 29; so, is it
> there anything that I'm missing for Fedora to work?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Irene
> _______________________________________________
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[Irene Diez]

Hello Ben,

I've been using microdnf since then and it works as expected, haven't
had an issue, thanks!

Irene

On Fri, 20 Jan 2023 at 23:47, Ben Herrick  wrote:
> Irene,
>
> You may need to give microdnf a try, as DNF will use all of your 1GB of RAM and get killed by the out-of-memory routines.
>
> <code>
> # rpm -ivh http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/updates/36/Everything/armhfp/Packages/m/microdnf-3.9.0-1.fc36.armv7hl.rpm
> # sudo microdnf upgrade --refresh -y
> </code>
>
> There will be a move to DNF5, which will remove some of the memory pressure and improve speed, but it's not scheduled until Fedora 39.
>
> Please note that Fedora 36 is also the last release for ARMHFP (RPI 2B), if I recall correctly.
>
> I hope this helps!
>
> -Ben
>
> On Fri, 2023-01-20 at 22:39 +0000, Irene Diez wrote:
>
> Hello there,
>
> I'm trying to install Fedora-Minimal-36-1.5.armhfp.raw on my raspberry pi 2B. Installation was a success but the device runs out of memory when trying to install anything via dnf and I get kicked out of the shell.
>
> I've followed the installation instructions in https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/Raspberry_Pi#Manual, which specify that this model is supported since Fedora 29; so, is it there anything that I'm missing for Fedora to work?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Irene
> _______________________________________________
> arm mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
>
> arm mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
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> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
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[Gregory Carter]

DNF no longer has sufficient resources on my PI 3, after a recent update,
to work anymore.

The slooooooow creap of fixes, patches and related support elements to make
ARM a well supported option on Fedora is taking its toll.

I know microdnf has been discussed a few times, but here is another
alternative which worked for me.

Another way of dealing with dnf memory issues is to add swap space using a
swap file on my Raspberry PI 3+

This corrects a memory deficit of about 200MB on my PI 3's working set of
physical RAM pages, which kicks me out of the remote shell.

Here is the steps I used to start using dnf again:

I decided I would put the swap file off the /mnt so I made a directory for
it:
mkdir /mnt/swapfiles

Then I made the swapfile I picked 5G, if you don't have that sort of space
you might need to experiment with an appropriate size, maybe 2G?
fallocate -l 5G /mnt/swapfiles/swpf1

An Alternative is to use dd to make the swp if you happen to be
running a slimmed down installation and do not have fallocate
installed.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/swapfiles/swpf1 bs=1024 count=5048576

Set the access rights on the swapfile like so:
chmod 600 /mnt/swapfiles/swpf1

Tell Linux about the swapfile:
mkswap /mnt/swapfiles/swpf1

Activate the swapfile:
swapon /mnt/swapfiles/swpf1

I only use the swap file when I am loading or patching with DNF, so I
did not put the swapfile configuration into my fstab file.

So I just execute a swapon before I do a "dnf update".

My reason for doing so is to eliminate any unwanted writes to the
sdcard that are not absolutely required.

Which helps extend the life of the sdcard.

If you want to add the swapfile so that it is always on, you have to
add a line to the /etc/fstab file like so:
/mnt/swapfiles/swpf1 swap swap defaults 0 0

i hope you found this helpful.  I know I did.  :-)

On Fri, Jan 20, 2023 at 3:39 PM Irene Diez  wrote:
> Hello there,
>
> I'm trying to install Fedora-Minimal-36-1.5.armhfp.raw on my raspberry pi
> 2B. Installation was a success but the device runs out of memory when
> trying to install anything via dnf and I get kicked out of the shell.
>
> I've followed the installation instructions in
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/Raspberry_Pi#Manual,
> which specify that this model is supported since Fedora 29; so, is it there
> anything that I'm missing for Fedora to work?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Irene
> _______________________________________________
> arm mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> Do not reply to spam, report it:
> https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue