adding memory to my laptop causes subsequent f9a installs to fail

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Fulko Hew wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca> wrote:
> >
> >   until now, i've test installed f9a several times on a gateway laptop
> >  with 512M of RAM.  after adding another 1G of DDR 400 RAM, every
> >  install attempt ends up hanging somewhere -- checking SW dependencies,
> >  formatting the root filesystem, and the latest 300+ packages into the
> >  install.
> >
> >   is there something about extra memory that f9a just doesn't like?
>
> You may want to consider trying an install with only the 1G stick
> installed replacing the existing 512M (if possible) instead of
> simply adding the additional memory... and seeing what happens
> during an install.

ok, here's the latest.  just to make sure nothing had changed
overnight, i again tried an install with all 1.5G of RAM, and the
install hung at the 90% point of formatting the root filesystem.
(this is a default install, so i have a small /boot and the rest all
root.)

i restarted and added "mem=512m" and the install just got by that
point and is currently asking me about software and ... whoa ... bad
craziness:

...
Starting graphical installation...
install exited abnormally [1/1]
sending termination signals...done
sending kill signals...done
disabling swap...
...
unmounting filesystems...
...
done

  that is *so* not what i was hoping for.  and virtual console 4 shows
a kernel panic.  (details to follow depending on whether i can
reproduce it.)

  to sum up, *every* install i've ever tried on this laptop with only
512M of physical memory installed has worked.  *every* install i've
tried with the extra 1G in has failed, even if i used "mem=512m".

  i'm going to try this one more time, with all 1.5G, and "mem=512m"
to see if that's exactly reproducible ... yup, it's reproducible but
virtual console 4 now tells me a different story:

... hald[1286] ... [I] osspec.c:273: /proc/mounts tells, that the
mount has tree changed   [um ... what?  is that english?]

(repeat last msg twice more)

  and at the very top of the screen, i can just see:

... hald[1286] ... device.c:3890: Error removing device

  what the heck, let's try this one more time, OK?  with the
"mem=512m".

wow ... that didn't take long:

<6>anaconda[1275] general protection rip:2aaaaad6df3a rsp:7fff8c226c60 error:0

  thoughts?


rday
--

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry:
    Have classroom, will lecture.

http://crashcourse.ca                          Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
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