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action #89734

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[SLE-17630][PM-2253] Low mem devices like ARM-based, IoT, VMs, etc. can be installed (or installed faster) when using swap on zram

Added by riafarov about 3 years ago. Updated about 3 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
JERiveraMoya
Target version:
SUSE QA - SLE 15 SP3
Start date:
2021-03-09
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:

Description

Feature aims low memory installations where zram is of a great help.

Feature is available in TW and SLES.

What to cover:

  • Low memory installations on different architectures
  • Test zram, zram.swap and zram.root options
  • Recognize how many modules can be enabled with qt installation with Y2DEUG=1 (each module increases memory consumption)
  • Check defaults (zram disabled by default)
  • Evaluate how much it speeds up installation to consider usage of zram=1 in some slow installations
  • Follow-up ticket for automation
  • Provide feedback to the YaST team

Useful links

Trello card content:
https://jira.suse.com/browse/PM-2253

This is the common scenario of every GA and SP: We keep adding new features and packages, QA tests some of them and then with RC phase, Beta customers start testing. And they find problems. Some of them are usually about not enough memory.

This idea is about using some special Kernel module that compresses the main memory, zram. Fedora already uses that, Raspbian / Ubuntu too. It not only speeds up installation on small-RAM systems, it sometimes makes it even "possible" to install on them.

It's an internal change, I believe that if we test it well, we can introduce it even in SLE 15 SP3.

See more some notes/questions/links in https://trello.com/c/eLEqACEs/3736-zram-zswap-in-inst-sys

Review

Testing showed overall positive effects (see linuxrc PR) and no visible drawbacks.

I've submitted this also to SP3 and disabled it per default as we are too late in the release cycle. Can be enabled with a simple option if needed.

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