Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2014 02:27:01 +0100 From: Mark Martinec <Mark.Martinec+freebsd@ijs.si> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Installer fails with "out of swap space" when installing ZFS-on-root with less then 4 GB mem (10.0-RC4) Message-ID: <7a61b7a1f156dcf67b3ba44bca7dd906@mailbox.ijs.si>
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I was playing with bhyve on 10.0-RC4, trying to install another 10.0-RC4 into a 16 GB ZFS volume using the network installation DVD. Mostly kept defaults, except that I chose a ZFS-on-root installation. The amd64 host was given 1 GB of RAM on the first attempt, but failed. It fails on 2 GB RAM too, but succeeds when given 4 GB of RAM. It's a bit tricky to capture the failure reason, because the installation script covers the underlying failure and just reports by the end of the 'Archive Extraction' phase: An installation step has been aborted. Would you like to restart the installation or exit the installer? Nevertheless, capturing the output using a null modem on a bhyve's serial console (/dev/nmdm) the failure reason is revealed: Jan 5 03:20:10 kernel: pid 1496 (distextract), uid 0, was killed: out of swap space Jan 5 03:20:10 kernel: pid 621 (devd), uid 0, was killed: out of swap space Jan 5 03:20:10 kernel: pid 1176 (dhclient), uid 65, was killed: out of swap space Jan 5 03:20:10 dhclient[1123]: connection closed Jan 5 03:20:10 dhclient[1123]: exiting. [1;24r[m[?7h[?1h=[?1h=[H[J FreeBSD Installer So it seems that the gpt partitioning does succeed in creating the necessary partitions including the swap space, but that swap space is not mounted when the OS installation begins. I'm sure that some percentage of virtual memory could easily be swapped out with not much ill-effect on further decompressing and unpacking of files and other installation steps. Seems unreasonable that 2 MB of memory is insufficient for a plain OS installation on ZFS. I understand that ZFS would be happier with more memory for heavy production use, and that a modern real iron has much more than 4 GB of memory, but virtualized guests are often dedicated to a single task and could do well with 'just' 2 GB of memory, even if using ZFS. So my suggestion is twofold: - let the installer mount the available swap partitions before jumping into heavy installation work; - avoid covering an underlying failure with a quickly-redrawn installer menu; at least some delay after a failure but before erasing the screen would be useful, avoiding the user to go to great lengths to be able to capture the failure reason. Mark
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