upgrading systems with <= 2 GiB RAM

upgrading systems with <= 2 GiB RAM

[Marco van Hulten]

Hello—

I have an oldish amd64 system with 2 GiB of memory, but it is fast
enough to use as a media center.  Guix was last updated early this
year.  Upgrading it now takes many days.  It keeps on swapping (using
quite consistently 2 of 4 GiB of swap available).

Do you think the swapping is the reason that it takes so long?

Would it be a general strong advice to use more than 2 GiB, or is it
likely useful to give details like which program is compiling (as in a
proper bug report)?

—Marco

Re: upgrading systems with <= 2 GiB RAM

[Marius Bakke]

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Marco van Hulten <marco@hulten.org> writes:

> Hello—
>
> I have an oldish amd64 system with 2 GiB of memory, but it is fast
> enough to use as a media center.  Guix was last updated early this
> year.  Upgrading it now takes many days.  It keeps on swapping (using
> quite consistently 2 of 4 GiB of swap available).
>
> Do you think the swapping is the reason that it takes so long?
>
> Would it be a general strong advice to use more than 2 GiB, or is it
> likely useful to give details like which program is compiling (as in a
> proper bug report)?

Ideally you should not have to compile anything.  Have you authorized
the ci.guix.gnu.org signing key?

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Re: upgrading systems with <= 2 GiB RAM

[Marco van Hulten]

Marius—

Je 31 okt 23:49 skribis Marius:
> Marco van Hulten <marco@hulten.org> writes:
> 
> > I have an oldish amd64 system with 2 GiB of memory, but it is fast
> > enough to use as a media center.  Guix was last updated early this
> > year.  Upgrading it now takes many days.  It keeps on swapping (using
> > quite consistently 2 of 4 GiB of swap available).
> >
> > Do you think the swapping is the reason that it takes so long?
> >
> > Would it be a general strong advice to use more than 2 GiB, or is it
> > likely useful to give details like which program is compiling (as in a
> > proper bug report)?  
> 
> Ideally you should not have to compile anything.  Have you authorized
> the ci.guix.gnu.org signing key?

I did not authorize that signing key.  Now that I have, upgrading the
system and installing packages goes much faster.

Thanks for this!

—Marco

Re: upgrading systems with <= 2 GiB RAM

[Marius Bakke]

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Marco van Hulten <marco@hulten.org> writes:

> Marius—
>
> Je 31 okt 23:49 skribis Marius:
>> Marco van Hulten <marco@hulten.org> writes:
>> 
>> > I have an oldish amd64 system with 2 GiB of memory, but it is fast
>> > enough to use as a media center.  Guix was last updated early this
>> > year.  Upgrading it now takes many days.  It keeps on swapping (using
>> > quite consistently 2 of 4 GiB of swap available).
>> >
>> > Do you think the swapping is the reason that it takes so long?
>> >
>> > Would it be a general strong advice to use more than 2 GiB, or is it
>> > likely useful to give details like which program is compiling (as in a
>> > proper bug report)?  
>> 
>> Ideally you should not have to compile anything.  Have you authorized
>> the ci.guix.gnu.org signing key?
>
> I did not authorize that signing key.  Now that I have, upgrading the
> system and installing packages goes much faster.

Glad it worked!

It would be ideal if Guix printed a warning when using a substitute
server whose signing key is not authorized.  Any volunteers?  :-)

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Re: upgrading systems with <= 2 GiB RAM

[Chris Marusich]

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Marco van Hulten <marco@hulten.org> writes:

> Hello—
>
> I have an oldish amd64 system with 2 GiB of memory, but it is fast
> enough to use as a media center.  Guix was last updated early this
> year.  Upgrading it now takes many days.  It keeps on swapping (using
> quite consistently 2 of 4 GiB of swap available).
>
> Do you think the swapping is the reason that it takes so long?
>
> Would it be a general strong advice to use more than 2 GiB, or is it
> likely useful to give details like which program is compiling (as in a
> proper bug report)?
>
> —Marco

If you wind up compiling things, it will likely fail on larger builds.
For example, my old machine which has 2 GB of RAM fails when trying to
compile IceCat.  I suppose the only possible solution is to always use
pre-built binaries, either by using substitutes or by building first on
a machine with more memory, and then copying the results over via "guix
copy" or "guix archive".

-- 
Chris

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