Re: dpkg fails on low-memory-hardware
Hi,
On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Martin Klaiber wrote:
> Hello everybody, this is my first post to this list.
>
> Some time ago I wanted to upgrade an old laptop (Toshiba T4900CT,
> from 1994) from Debian Etch to Debian Lenny. Unfortunately dpkg
> (resp. apt-get or aptitude) was running out of memory. The maximum
> amount of RAM for this laptop is limited to 40 MB.
dpkg uses an amount of RAM proportional to the number of packages
installed, but apt-get/aptitude use an amount of RAM proportional to the
number of available packages.
And the number of available packages has grown as usual. So it's not
unexpected if apt-get uses all the memory.
Are you sure dpkg alone does not work?
> The only problem seems to be dpkg or associated programs, like
> aptitude oder apt-get. Strangely enough, the laptop has 256 MB of
> swap-space which dpkg (aptitude, apt-get) seem to ignore. Other
> programs use swap, so it should be no general problem.
How do you know that they are not using swap ?
I don't know of any reason why dpkg/apt-get would not use swap.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
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