ack to the two lorax patches ----- Original Message ----- > With F17, a virtual machine with 256MB RAM will hang trying to start > anaconda. Sometimes there's OOM-kill messages, sometimes not, but RAM > is > definitely the problem. > > > == Solution == > > Now, we know that the initramfs is using ~81MB RAM. We can reduce > that to > ~17M by doing two things: > > 1) Remove kernel modules & firmware (they're already in the > runtime) > 2) Compress everything we're not going to use during the install > > This isn't quite enough though. Once you do that you can start the > GUI, > but if you select any language other than English the install > crashes. > (localedef runs out of RAM and fails, which makes anaconda unable to > switch > languages) > > So we need to go back to using the pregenerated locale files. This > increases runtime size by ~6MB (~4%) but the installer will actually > run > and complete successfully. Plus it lets us remove code, which is > always > nice. > > > == Implementation == > > There's two sets of patches here - two for lorax and three for > anaconda. > > The anaconda patches add an anaconda-cleanup-initramfs.service that > does > the two things mentioned above, and then removes all the code that > runs > 'localedef'. > > The lorax patches remove localedef and keep the existing locale > files, > and then keep the dracut-shutdown.service (and its dependencies) so > we can > unpack the compressed initramfs at shutdown time (so reboot still > works > right). > > > == Notes == > > I have built images (based on F17) locally and confirmed that, with > these > patches, it's possible to complete an install (from boot.iso) on a > virtual > machine with 256MB RAM. > > The compression takes about 3.6 seconds on my test VM (~2.6GHz CPU). > It has > no noticeable impact on startup speed; it happens in the background > while > anaconda is starting. (Anaconda startup is mostly I/O-bound, but > compression is CPU-bound, so they complement each other.) > > Using xz for compression would make the compressed initramfs ~4MB > smaller, > but it takes ~45s (!) and uses 100MB RAM (!!), so that's not viable. > > Removing unused languages from locale-archive doesn't change its file > size > any (!?), so that part might be unnecessary. Further testing would be > helpful. > > > Comments and questions are welcome. > > -w > > Anaconda diffstat: > anaconda | 6 ---- > data/systemd/Makefile.am | 12 +++++++- > data/systemd/anaconda-cleanup-initramfs | 35 > +++++++++++++++++++++++ > data/systemd/anaconda-cleanup-initramfs.service | 11 +++++++ > pyanaconda/iw/language_gui.py | 1 - > pyanaconda/kickstart.py | 1 - > pyanaconda/language.py | 18 ------------ > pyanaconda/textw/language_text.py | 1 - > 8 files changed, 57 insertions(+), 28 deletions(-) > > Lorax diffstat: > share/runtime-cleanup.tmpl | 20 +++++++++++++------- > share/runtime-install.tmpl | 2 ++ > 2 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) > > _______________________________________________ > Anaconda-devel-list mailing list > Anaconda-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list > _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing list Anaconda-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
