Re: aptitude not working

[Richard Braun]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 11:53:44AM +0100, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> I increased the allocated RAM size of the VM to 1024MB and now I read this:

Try 2g or even 3g.

> (btw: can you read out these values later on, with a command similar to
> dmesg? pausing VirtualBOX and typing out things is boring)

See /var/log/dmesg.

> I think something dies: it might have to do with the console, I find it
> strange that if I type into aptitude while it appears hanging, after killing
> it in ctrl-c I actually see what I type in console. Do you want a
> screenshot?

I'm not sure what's happening there and it's likely a screenshot won't help.

> I did an upgrade with apt-get which works fine and which included an
> aptitude update.
> I retried aptitude afterwards: having updated everything with apt-get, I
> just tried to remove  package, thus, no actual download needed! Yet it
> hangs.

Always keep an eye on swap usage, and maybe /proc/slabinfo. One problem
with increasing swap usage is that it requires more kernel objects to
track memory, and it can in some cases (and easily with older kernels)
exhaust kernel memory.

> If I am doing something wrong, I guess it is not in the usage of aptitude
> itself, but more in something in my HURD setup?

I don't think you're doing something "wrong", I think we (the developers)
know the system enough to avoid most of the caveats. But yes, it's
probably caused by a Hurd defect.

-- 
Richard Braun