RAM Usage During Installation of Lubuntu

[Aere Greenway]

On 06/16/2013 12:22 PM, Nio Wiklund wrote:
> 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
>
Nio, and all:

There remained just one final piece of information to satisfy my 
curiosity on this subject...

I booted the Lubuntu 13.04 live CD on my primary machine (which already 
has a swap partition on the hard disk).

Running on the live-CD (after completion of the boot), executing a "top" 
command in a terminal, it showed that I had swap space of the expected 
size.

I also ran the "Disks" accessory, and it showed that on the hard-drive, 
there was just one partition mounted, and it was the swap partition.

So it appears that if you boot a live CD/DVD on a system that already 
has a swap partition, it finds that partition, and automatically mounts 
it as the swap partition, before you do your first action on the live-CD.

-- Aere