f18 i386 installer memory requirements

[John Reiser]

On 01/08/2013 04:47 PM, Frantisek Hanzlik wrote:
> i'm trying install f18 on older i686 machine (1.8GHz P4 CPU/512 MB
> RAM/160 GB HDD/Radeon 9000 64MB graphics), doing NFS graphical
> installation with XFCE desktop (and several add-ons groups).
> Installation started from installation CD (images/boot.iso image),
> anaconda 18.37.8. Install CD Media check is fine.
> Machine always stop respond in "Checking software dependencies..."
> phase; CD-ROM permanently rotate and it's all.
> 
> I suspect this may be caused by insufficient RAM ...

If you have concerns about RAM, then your first attempt should be
with no add-on groups.  Or, if you do try add-ons but run into trouble
then you should try again without the add-ons.

I just tried Fedora-18-Final-RC2-i386-DVD after converting to USB2,0
using livecd-iso-to-disk.  My 1.6GHz machine has 1GB RAM, but I restricted
the kernel to 511MB by appending " mem=511m" to the end of the kernel
command line [note the lower-case 'm'.]  Switching to VT2 after boot
[type Ctrl-Alt-F2] then "cat /proc/meminfo" showed "MemTotal: 507984 kB",
so I was running as if only 511MB of RAM.  The graphics card is
ATI 9250 (9200 PRO) with 128MB.  [Switch back Ctrl-Alt-F6 for graphics.]

I had no trouble "Checking software dependencies" with either the default
Gnome3 desktop, or after changing to Xfce desktop.  /proc/meminfo showed:
  MemFree:        11180 kB
  Buffers:        32664 kB
  Cached:        269504 kB
  SwapTotal:          0 kB
  Committed_AS:  483308 kB
and "ps alx | grep anac" showed anaconda with VSZ=219M and RSS=128M.
I did not continue with actual installation because I didn't want
my existing boot configuration (grub1, BIOS drives swapped, ...) clobbered.
I had 2GB of swap space configured by manual partitioning, re-using
an existing linux-swap(v1) partition; but note that no swap had been
used yet because SwapTotal: 0 kB.

So, I would say that 511MB is enough to start actual package installation
for default Xfce desktop.   [Last spring I installed Fedora 17 default
Gnome3 desktop complete from USB2.0 using 383MB at 700MHz and kernel boot
parameter " nomemcheck".  It took 80 minutes versus 17 minutes
on my 8GB at 3GHz machine.  I estimate DVD would have taken around
2.5 hours due to repeated spin-up and paging from squashfs on DVD.]

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