RAM Usage During Installation of Lubuntu

[Nio Wiklund]

On 2013-06-16 20:00, Aere Greenway wrote:
> On 06/10/2013 02:25 AM, Nio Wiklund wrote:
>> I think the difference is *already installed swap*
>>
>> and it is probably not told to the newbies clearly enough, how important
>> it is when the RAM is low.
>>
>> If you start with a computer without linux, there will be no swap, and
>> if the RAM is below 1 GB (or maybe below 768MB), you should start
>> editing the partitions with for example gparted, and at least create
>> swap. I think it is too late at the partitioning page of the installer
>> (if the you reach that page at all).
>>
> Nio, and all:
> 
> The comment about "already-installed swap" may be of particular
> significance in my case. 
> 
> When I install from a live CD/DVD, I (almost?) always do manual
> partitioning (the "Something Else" choice). 
> 
> From not knowing otherwise, and also a bit of "programmers'
> superstition", even though there was a pre-existing swap partition on
> the disk, I would always click on the existing swap partition, and click
> the "Change" button. 
> 
> In the dialog that came up, there was nothing there that actually needed
> to be changed, so I would just click on the OK button, hoping that the
> installer now knew about the swap partition. 
> 
> From what I have read in this e-mail stream, what I have been doing may
> have had the opposite effect from what I intended. 
> 
> It may be that if I had left the swap partition alone, the installer
> would have found it, and all would have been well.  But where I selected
> the swap partition, and clicked "Change", it now became a newly-created
> swap partition, and was possibly not available to the installer. 
> 
> By the way, I yesterday installed Xubuntu 13.04 on my 450 megahertz
> machine with 512 meg of RAM.  In that install, I did not click on the
> pre-existing swap partition, instead, letting the installer find it. 
> 
> I had put a system-resource monitor in the task bar (which includes the
> amount of swap space), and throughout the installation (I used the "Try
> Xubuntu" button), I monitored the swap space used. 
> 
> From the very beginning, it showed there was swap space available (in
> the expected amount), and during the install, it used some of that space
> (a maximum of 63 megabytes, as I recall). 
> 
> In this install, to test this, I did not remove the Ubiquity slide-show
> package. 
> 
> The installation went successfully to completion, and did not crash. 
> 
> Unfortunately, I cannot conclusively say that leaving the pre-existing
> swap partition alone in the manual-partitioning was the difference that
> made it work, because I did the installation from a USB stick with a
> persistance area on the USB.  I had to do that because Xubuntu won't fit
> on a CD, and a CD-drive is all that machine has. 
> 
> What I am sure of, is that it used that pre-existing swap partition
> throughout the installation. 
> 
> Again, the installation above was of Xubuntu (not Lubuntu).  But the
> problem where I have to remove the Ubiquity slide-show for the
> installation to succeed on systems having only 512 megabytes of RAM, has
> happened to me (in the past) on Lubuntu, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, and
> UbuntuStudio. 
> 
> -- 
> Sincerely,
> Aere
> 
Aere,

I think your analysis is correct, so if you have low RAM

1. Make sure there is swap and that it is active before starting the
installer

2. Do not touch it during the installation (at the partitioning page)

Best regards
Nio