Bug#241768: dpkg: low mem systems - do not load available packages into memory

[Paul Miller <paul@pinheiro.dyndns.org>]

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.10.20
Severity: normal

For low memory (or embedded systems), dpkg should not load the available 
packages into memory.  For the stable distribution, this takes up nearly 
11MB and made it difficult to upgrade my system -- upgrading libc6 
terminated due to memory constrains.  I was able to install my packages 
by commenting out all sources...

My embedded system is a PowerPC with 32MB of ram using a NFS root for 
development.

Thanks,
-Paul

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.3
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  dselect                     1.10.20      a user tool to manage Debian packa
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-11 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an

-- no debconf information