Feature #5390

Test hardware requirements on Wheezy

Added by Tails 2013-07-18 07:40:03 . Updated 2014-05-13 15:30:45 .

Status:
Resolved
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
intrigeri
Category:
Hardware support
Target version:
Tails_1.1
Start date:
Due date:
% Done:

100%

Feature Branch:
Type of work:
Test
Blueprint:

Starter:
1
Affected tool:
Deliverable for:

Description

test if Tails/Wheezy needs more than 1GB of RAM. If so, notify user if hardware requirements are not met (Feature #5502) will be a goal for 1.1.

Files

tails512mbram.png (140272 B) malaparte, 2013-10-13 00:21:19
tails512mbram-top.png (194162 B) malaparte, 2013-10-13 00:22:59

Subtasks

Related issues

Related to Tails - Feature #7235: Looser memory requirements when checking for upgrades Resolved 2014-05-13

History

#1 Updated by intrigeri 2013-10-04 08:47:28

  • Starter set to Yes

Should be easy to test in a VM with an experimental image from http://nightly.tails.boum.org/build_Tails_ISO_feature-wheezy/

#2 Updated by malaparte 2013-10-13 00:21:19

Tested with 512mb RAM. Before Iceweasel+Vidalia are opened, consumes about 30% of RAM. After Iceweasel open consuming 60-70% of RAM + significant CPU (although this may have been the computer I was using or the way Virtualbox was set-up). Some screen artefacts. Screenshot attached

#3 Updated by malaparte 2013-10-13 00:22:59

Additional screen shot showing the output of top attached.

#4 Updated by sajolida 2013-12-29 03:38:31

  • Subject changed from test hardware requirements on Wheezy to Test hardware requirements on Wheezy

#5 Updated by intrigeri 2014-04-03 13:09:11

  • Category set to Hardware support

#6 Updated by tails022 2014-05-07 02:26:58

  • File <del>missing: Tails_1024MB_RAM_update_error.png</del> added

Attached is the error message that I get with Tails 1.0 on a Virtualbox VM with 1152MB ram (128MB gfx-shared). The error message only appears if I start Iceweasel immediately after the “Tor is ready” message appears. It doesn’t appear if I start Iceweasel a minute or so after the Tor-ready message appeared. Beside the error message everything seems to work well.

#7 Updated by intrigeri 2014-05-07 16:49:26

tails022 wrote:
> Attached is the error message that I get with Tails 1.0 on a Virtualbox VM with 1152MB ram (128MB gfx-shared).

Thanks for this report. However, this ticket is about testing hardware requirements on Tails based on Wheezy (scheduled to be released on June 10), so 1.0 reports are out-of-scope here. Anyway, we are aware that the check for upgrades uses a bit too much memory, see Feature #6877. Help is welcome :)

#8 Updated by intrigeri 2014-05-12 08:44:24

  • File deleted (Tails_1024MB_RAM_update_error.png)

#9 Updated by intrigeri 2014-05-12 09:06:17

  • Assignee set to intrigeri

Current devel branch:

  • 1 GiB of RAM, starting Iceweasel as soon as Tor is ready => Not enough memory available to check for upgrades
  • 1 GiB of RAM, simply waiting => Not enough memory available to check for upgrades (about 30 seconds after Tor is ready, as expected)
  • 1 GiB of RAM, waiting ~1 minute after Tor is ready, and closing the “Not enough memory available to check for upgrades” dialog => 832 MiB used, among which 105 MiB of buffers, and 471 MiB of cache
  • 1 GiB of RAM, waiting ~1 minute after Tor is ready, closing the “Not enough memory available to check for upgrades” dialog, Iceweasel started and has loaded homepage => 836 MiB used, among which 149 MiB of buffers, and 274 MiB of cache

Tails 1.0:

  • 1 GiB of RAM, starting Iceweasel as soon as Tor is ready => Not enough memory available to check for upgrades
  • 1 GiB of RAM, simply waiting => upgrades can be checked
  • 1 GiB of RAM, waiting until the check for upgrades is done => 866MiB used memory, among which 83 MiB of buffers, and 354 MiB of cache
  • 1 GiB of RAM, waiting until the check for upgrades is done, Iceweasel started and has loaded homepage => 734 MiB used, among which 96 MiB of buffers, and 184 MiB of cache

#10 Updated by intrigeri 2014-05-12 09:59:22

It seems that the memory requirement limits I have come up with experimentaly in tails-upgrade-frontend-wrapper are waaay overestimated wrt. checking for upgrade availability:

  1. if an incremental upgrade is available, then the Upgrader checks if there is enough memory to install it anyway
  2. on a build from current devel branch, I could successfully check for upgrades, when none is available, with much less memory available than what the wrapper requires: Iceweasel started, 142 MiB free memory, and 551 MiB total free memory
  3. on Tails 0.23, I could sucessfully check for upgrades (that are available), with much less memory available than what the wrapper requires: Iceweasel, Pidgin and OpenOffice started, 115 MiB free memory, and 445 MiB total free memory

#11 Updated by intrigeri 2014-05-13 15:25:41

  • Subject changed from Test hardware requirements on Wheezy to O

#12 Updated by intrigeri 2014-05-13 15:29:03

  • related to Feature #7235: Looser memory requirements when checking for upgrades added

#13 Updated by intrigeri 2014-05-13 15:29:27

  • Subject changed from O to Test hardware requirements on Wheezy

#14 Updated by intrigeri 2014-05-13 15:30:45

  • Status changed from Confirmed to Resolved
  • % Done changed from 0 to 100

Our test suite results, added to the fix available to Feature #7235, makes me call this a done task.