Testing ROS on VMWare With 32MB... Interesting Results

[TwoTailedFox]

Been having a poke around, it seems neither LiveCD nor BootCD will
boot into GUI (Using latest HEAD SVN), on 32MB.


BootCD will complete first stage installer, but won't boot into GUI to
load the second stage setup. LiveCD immediately hangs.


Now, on VMWare, I use Other/Other as the OS Category, and I've been
hearing some (like WaxDragon), using Windows XP Professional as the OS
Category. I obtained a BootCD of 17751 rev, and tried it on the WinXP
setting, using 32MB. First time I tried it, it hung at copying
ole32.dll (34%). Second time, I got a STOP error during the file
transfer. Third time, however, it completed the first stage fine.

The only difference between the Other and WinXP Pro settings is the
inclusion of a USB Controller. I added one to my "Other" setup, and
ROS, again, installed fine first time around on 32MB.

Now, for the interesting bit. The error is a pretty constant one, and
it complains of No Memory Pages Available. It seems just common to the
GUI, seeing as ROS won't boot on 32MB even once Setup is completed.
This is the case for both SVN Live and BootCD's.

Something in the GUI is causing a leak


-- 
"I had a handle on life, but then it broke"

[Hartmut Birr]

Hi,

running ROS in qemu with ctm and taskmgr as application reports the
following memory usage:

MC_CACHE:     3671 pages
MC_USER:      2764 pages
MC_PPOOL:     448 pages
MC_NPPOOL:    4973 pages
Free:         20894 pages
 
PagedPool:    3684 blocks with 1242232 bytes
NonPagedPool: 13298 blocks with 11009752 bytes (283 free blocks with
86312 bytes)

70 blocks with 7358512 bytes from NonPagedPool are used for symbols.

- Hartmut

TwoTailedFox wrote:

>  Been having a poke around, it seems neither LiveCD nor
> BootCD will
> boot into GUI (Using latest HEAD SVN), on 32MB.
>
>
> BootCD will complete first stage installer, but won't boot into GUI to
> load the second stage setup. LiveCD immediately hangs.
>
>
> Now, on VMWare, I use Other/Other as the OS Category, and I've been
> hearing some (like WaxDragon), using Windows XP Professional as the OS
> Category. I obtained a BootCD of 17751 rev, and tried it on the WinXP
> setting, using 32MB. First time I tried it, it hung at copying
> ole32.dll (34%). Second time, I got a STOP error during the file
> transfer. Third time, however, it completed the first stage fine.
>
> The only difference between the Other and WinXP Pro settings is the
> inclusion of a USB Controller. I added one to my "Other" setup, and
> ROS, again, installed fine first time around on 32MB.
>
> Now, for the interesting bit. The error is a pretty constant one, and
> it complains of No Memory Pages Available. It seems just common to the
> GUI, seeing as ROS won't boot on 32MB even once Setup is completed.
> This is the case for both SVN Live and BootCD's.
>
> Something in the GUI is causing a leak
>
>
>   
>

[Alex Ionescu]

TwoTailedFox wrote:

>  Something in the GUI is causing a leak
>   
>  
I don't think it's a leak, it's just the GUI eating memory.

I was able to boot ReactOS with 13.5MB memory into command prompt and 
ping, that's about it.
15-16MB got me working FTP and other command apps worked fine.
18MB got me GUI, but almost nothing else would run.
20MB got me GUI with the basic apps working, regedit, my computer, 
taskmgr, etc.
24MB got me a fully working ReactOS environment that never crashed due 
to low-memory.

Best regards,
Alex Ionescu

[WaxDragon]

Let's keep in mind that the only time Alex was able to obtain these
results are in the revisions right after the 0.2.6 release.  The
versions that worked are noted in the "ReactOS is a fat pig" bug. 
Also, your Testing Coordinator *still* cannot reproduce TwoTailedFox's
results.  If anyone else can, I am interesting in hearing about your
config.

On 9/13/05, Alex Ionescu <ionucu(a)videotron.ca> wrote:
>   TwoTailedFox wrote:
>  
> >  Something in the GUI is causing a leak
> >
> >  
>  I don't think it's a leak, it's just the GUI eating memory.
>  
>  I was able to boot ReactOS with 13.5MB memory into command prompt and
>  ping, that's about it.
>  15-16MB got me working FTP and other command apps worked fine.
>  18MB got me GUI, but almost nothing else would run.
>  20MB got me GUI with the basic apps working, regedit, my computer,
>  taskmgr, etc.
>  24MB got me a fully working ReactOS environment that never crashed due
>  to low-memory.
>  
>  Best regards,
>  Alex Ionescu
>  
>  
>  _______________________________________________
>  Ros-dev mailing list
>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.com
>  http://reactos.com:8080/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
>   

-- 
#irc.freenode.net #reactos
01:03PM <filip2307> i don't know about any bug
01:04PM <filip2307> none exist
01:04PM <filip2307> ReactOS is prefect

[Alex Ionescu]

WaxDragon wrote:

>  Let's keep in mind that the only time Alex was able
> to obtain these
> results are in the revisions right after the 0.2.6 release. 
>  
Alex is still able to obtain these results with his current tree.
Alex noticed the other members of the team were not interested in 
achieving these results, so he has not continued to ensure they are 
still public.

>   The
> versions that worked are noted in the "ReactOS is a fat pig" bug. 
> Also, your Testing Coordinator *still* cannot reproduce TwoTailedFox's
> results.  If anyone else can, I am interesting in hearing about your
> config.
>  
Best regards,
Alex Ionescu

[TwoTailedFox]

I'm still surprised it works myself, partly because it sounds like it
really shouldn't be possible, given what everyone else is saying.

I'm going to have a butchers on Virtual PC 2004, since I've got a day
off tomorrow. I'll compile a fresh SVN copy of the BootCD and LiveCD,
and see what I can get working with that.

QEMU 0.7.0 for Windows, with 32MB using r17829, first stage completes
again, second stage complains it's out of Swap Space....

Bochs 2.1.1 with 32MB can't create the registry hives, and fails
around ~60% on 1st stage install.

Alex, I'm curious to see how you've got ROS booting with such low
memory. Needless to say, I'm very much interested to see the same
results.

On 9/13/05, Alex Ionescu <ionucu(a)videotron.ca> wrote:
>   WaxDragon wrote:
>  
> >  Let's keep in mind that the only time Alex was
> > able to obtain these
> > results are in the revisions right after the 0.2.6 release.
> >  
>  Alex is still able to obtain these results with his current tree.
>  Alex noticed the other members of the team were not interested in
>  achieving these results, so he has not continued to ensure they are
>  still public.
>  
> >   The
> > versions that worked are noted in the "ReactOS is a fat pig" bug.
> > Also, your Testing Coordinator *still* cannot reproduce TwoTailedFox's
> > results.  If anyone else can, I am interesting in hearing about your
> > config.
> >  
>  Best regards,
>  Alex Ionescu
>  
>  
>  _______________________________________________
>  Ros-dev mailing list
>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.com
>  http://reactos.com:8080/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
>   

-- 
"I had a handle on life, but then it broke"

[Ge van Geldorp]

>   From: TwoTailedFox
>  
>  I'm still surprised it works myself, partly because it sounds 
>  like it really shouldn't be possible, given what everyone 
>  else is saying.
>  
>  I'm going to have a butchers on Virtual PC 2004, since I've 
>  got a day off tomorrow. I'll compile a fresh SVN copy of the 
>  BootCD and LiveCD, and see what I can get working with that.
>  
>  QEMU 0.7.0 for Windows, with 32MB using r17829, first stage 
>  completes again, second stage complains it's out of Swap Space....
>  
>  Bochs 2.1.1 with 32MB can't create the registry hives, and 
>  fails around ~60% on 1st stage install.
>  
>  Alex, I'm curious to see how you've got ROS booting with such 
>  low memory. Needless to say, I'm very much interested to see 
>  the same results. 
Note that if you do a default build, you'll get a debug build which, at
runtime, will load symbol info. Hartmut computed that this takes up 7Mb of
memory. If you want to use as little memory as possible, you can do a
release build (copy config.template.xml to config.xml and change the DBG
value to 0), or you can prevent symbol info from being loaded by adding
/NOLOADSYMBOLS to the load options in freeldr.ini.

Gé van Geldorp.