[FS#1144] Opkg fails with Out of memory on a TP-Link RE450

[LEDE Bugs]

The following task has a new comment added:

FS#1144 - Opkg fails with Out of memory on a TP-Link RE450
User who did this - TDFKAOlli (TDFKAOlli)

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Same problem on TP-Link TL-WR1043N/ND v1:

BusyBox v1.25.1 () built-in shell (ash)

     _________
    /        /\      _    ___ ___  ___
   /  LE    /  \    | |  | __|   \| __|
  /    DE  /    \   | |__| _|| |) | _|
 /________/  LE  \  |____|___|___/|___|                      lede-project.org
 \        \   DE /
  \    LE  \    /  -----------------------------------------------------------
   \  DE    \  /    Reboot (17.01.4, r3560-79f57e422d)
    \________\/    -----------------------------------------------------------

root at LEDE:~# opkg list
Collected errors:
 * pkg_hash_add_from_file: Failed to open /var/opkg-lists/reboot_routing: Out of memory.

Update of packages still works. When I stop one of the tasks in the Startup list, then listing the packages works.

Seems that okpg has a memory requirement which makes it difficult to run on a low mem router. If would be great if it could be tuned for low memory consumption. Shutting down processes to install packages is a workaround but dangerous and not handy.

BTW: sysctl -w vm.min_free_kbytes=0 doesn't help in my case.
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More information can be found at the following URL:
https://bugs.lede-project.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=1144#comment4160