[05:09] <Torgoton> I'm doing a netboot install, low memory mode; being asked to select Installer components to load. Do I really need any of these, like nic-pcmcia-modules, or ide-modules?
[11:26] <cjwatson> Torgoton: depends on your system; if you don't have a PCMCIA network card you don't need nic-pcmcia-modules; if you don't have an IDE hard disk (one that doesn't show up as (P|S)ATA nowadays; there are still a few) then you don't need ide-modules
[14:08] <Torgoton> Thanks, cjwatson, but I selected those two since I am using a PCMCIA NIC and I wasn't sure about the latter. Right now it says Loading additional components; 45%; Retrieving partman-base.
[14:29] <Torgoton> It's bad when the last log message (tty4) is over nine hours old, right?
[15:13] <cjwatson> probably means it's run out of memory
[15:13] <cjwatson> (at a guess)
[15:15] <Torgoton> Indeed. Out of memory was one of the last messages, killing tar I think was the last.
[15:18] <Torgoton> Oh... netboot runs out of memory because it has to decompress everything it downloads, so that's why it's incompatible with such an old, 36MB-having machine, right?
[15:22] <cjwatson> the CD initrd has to load stuff into memory too ...
[15:22] <Torgoton> Is the bare minimum 32MB not valid any more?
[15:23] <cjwatson> your best bet is probably to try to set up a swap partition early (on a disk you aren't going to partition if possible; otherwise you'll have a little dance to swapoff while it rereads the partition table)
[15:23] <cjwatson> you didn't mention which release you were using ...
[15:23] <Torgoton> 8.04 LTS
[15:23] <cjwatson> I'd have to check, though. It does fluctuate up and down a bit, and lowmem is a difficult area for the installer
[15:23] <Torgoton> I can set up partitions before the install.
[15:23] <cjwatson> I have done 32MB installations, but they can take a bit of hackery
[15:24] <Torgoton> So not a tested, supported, just works(TM) kind of thing any more, alas.
[15:24] <Torgoton> Maybe I'll try 6.04 again.
[15:24] <cjwatson> 32MB installations have never been well-tested on Ubuntu
[15:24] <Torgoton> ok
[15:25] <cjwatson> largely because we don't expect the OS to work especially well after installation with that little memory, even if the installer works
[15:25] <Torgoton> Indeed.
[15:25] <cjwatson> I mean, it's probably possible, but you're talking something fairly cut-down, probably removing a number of "just works" type things
[15:26] <cjwatson> I would like to fix this problem of course, on general principles; I wouldn't be able to justify changing 8.04 for it though
[15:26] <cjwatson> I'll see if I can arrange for it to work properly in 9.04
[15:26] <Torgoton> hahahaa that would be awesome.
[15:26] <Torgoton> I am on the installer mailing list, and would be happy to run tests on this old beast.
[15:27] <Torgoton> and I am a software developer; familiar with very low-level code, but I haven't done x86 assembly in a long time.
[15:27] <cjwatson> the installer involves almost no assembly
[15:27] <Torgoton> and never dug into the Linux kernel or drivers... yet.
[15:27] <cjwatson> it's largely in C and shell
[15:27] <Torgoton> C and I go way back.
[15:28] <cjwatson> the worst long-standing problem with low-memory installations is localedef
[15:28] <cjwatson> to generate a UTF-8 locale, it requires about 50MB of working set
[15:28] <Torgoton> yow
[15:28] <cjwatson> now, this is after swap is up, but still, it'll thrash a small box to death
[15:29] <cjwatson> I've been working on and off (largely on boring train journeys and the like) on some optimisations for this, but haven't quite managed to preserve correctness yet, which is sort of key ;-)
[15:29] <cjwatson> I think I can shave 50% off without too much trouble once I figure out where the stupid bug is
[15:29] <Torgoton> It could probably use some optimization, but I imagine there's quite a learning cliff to get into that...
[15:29] <cjwatson> localedef is really, really hairy
[15:30] <cjwatson> not at all simple to optimise
[15:31] <Torgoton> I had an issue with a customer not getting proper printout of some Chinese characters (on a Windows 2000 system)... turns out the font my client shipped with the product so many years ago just didn't have those gyphs defined, so I have dabbled with UTF-8 just enough to know how hairy it can become.
[15:32] <Torgoton> and that's just the standard, not nearly-working code.
[15:32] <cjwatson> in outline localedef's memory consumption is because it allocates structures to represent each codepoint, without any way to collapse ranges of codepoints with identical properties
[15:33] <cjwatson> and it does fairly legitimately need to do it all up-front and then figure out what the output should be, rather than being able to stream it
[15:33] <Torgoton> understanding what it does doesn't help in understanding why... :)
[15:33] <cjwatson> the POSIX locale specification helps there
[15:34] <Torgoton> I bet
[15:35] <Torgoton> What's the best way for me to help?
[15:42] <cjwatson> localedef is probably a one-man job, but I'm pretty sure there's work to be done on lowmem in general by somebody who cares about it; start by reading the links from http://wiki.ubuntu.com/InstallerDevelopment on how the installer's put together, and then start scratching your itches ...
[15:43] <cjwatson> (not that I get on with ESR in general but he's right in this case)
[15:43] <cjwatson> InstallerDevelopment has links to how to get source code for things
[15:43] <Torgoton> just because someone is... the way they are, doesn't mean they are always wrong.
[15:44] <Torgoton> Excellent. I'll start there.
[15:44] <cjwatson> good patches in bug reports are like gold dust :-)
[15:44] <cjwatson> (or branches pushed for us to merge, if you prefer that)
[15:44] <Torgoton> baby steps
[15:45] <cjwatson> lowmem has some memory thresholds defined in it, which I try to update every so often, but often forget
[15:45] <cjwatson> that could use a maintainer who's testing the proper figures for Ubuntu
[15:46] <cjwatson> I think of late I've just been merging the Debian changes to it, which probably don't quite apply here since this is all quite sensitive to things like kernel module layout
[15:46] <Torgoton> I'm not sure what I can promise.
[15:46]  * cjwatson nods
[15:46] <cjwatson> I have to do what my boss wants first, other things are luxuries :)
[15:47] <Torgoton> Speaking of, I have to make up hours from the Inauguration.
[15:47] <Torgoton> (Fixing my functional tests on a Rails project...)
[19:31] <techguy97> Hello everyone... I need some tech help with installing 8.10 on a Compaq Desktop that keeps hanging during the install.