SIGILL during dpkg --configure -a, when installing ubuntu-desktop on SPARC

This is about installing ubuntu-desktop on a Sun Ultra 5 (360Mhz UltraSparc IIe, 512MByte RAM).

Setting up ubuntu-server-sparc 6.10 went through without a glitch, the machine runs well.

I wanted to install ubuntu-desktop to find out how to work around some X.org related problems that people had noticed with 6.10 on Ultra5.

Some packages failed to install, especially scrollekeeper-related ("failed to load external entity..."). I then installed scrollkeeper by itself (aptitude reinstall scrollkeeper) and relaunched the original ubuntu-desktop installation (aptitude install ubuntu-desktop) which started run.

Then I encountered the errors shown below, and Ctrl-C'd me out of them. Aptitude would then complain about dpkg needing to be run with --configure and -a, which is what I do:

**************** snip (start) **********************

root@fire:~# dpkg --configure -a
Setting up mono-gac (1.1.17.1-1ubuntu7) ...
* Installing 1 assembly from libdbus-1-cil into Mono

Unhandled Exception: System.ExecutionEngineException: SIGILL
  at <0x00000> <unknown method>
  at System.OutOfMemoryException..ctor (System.String message) [0x00000]

**************** snip (paused) **********************

Then the process just sits here. With <Ctrl-C> I make it jump to the next step - also in the subsequent occurrences of this error:

**************** snip (contiued) **********************

 * Installing 1 assembly from libgmime2.2-cil into Mono

Unhandled Exception: System.ExecutionEngineException: SIGILL
  at <0x00000> <unknown method>
  at System.OutOfMemoryException..ctor (System.String message) [0x00000]
dpkg: error processing mono-gac (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script killed by signal (Interrupt)
Setting up libdbus-1-cil (0.63.git.20060719-2ubuntu1) ...
* Installing 1 assembly from libdbus-1-cil into Mono

Unhandled Exception: System.ExecutionEngineException: SIGILL
  at <0x00000> <unknown method>
  at System.OutOfMemoryException..ctor (System.String message) [0x00000]
dpkg: error processing libdbus-1-cil (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script killed by signal (Interrupt)
Setting up libgmime2.2-cil (2.2.3-1ubuntu1) ...
* Installing 1 assembly from libgmime2.2-cil into Mono

Unhandled Exception: System.ExecutionEngineException: SIGILL
  at <0x00000> <unknown method>
  at System.OutOfMemoryException..ctor (System.String message) [0x00000]
dpkg: error processing libgmime2.2-cil (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script killed by signal (Interrupt)
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of f-spot:
 f-spot depends on libdbus-1-cil (>= 0.60); however:
  Package libdbus-1-cil is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing f-spot (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mono-runtime:
 mono-runtime depends on mono-gac (= 1.1.17.1-1ubuntu7); however:
  Package mono-gac is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing mono-runtime (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libgconf2.0-cil:
 libgconf2.0-cil depends on mono-runtime (>= 1.0); however:
  Package mono-runtime is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libgconf2.0-cil (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of tomboy:
 tomboy depends on mono-runtime (>= 1.0); however:
  Package mono-runtime is not configured yet.
 tomboy depends on libgconf2.0-cil (>= 2.15.0); however:
  Package libgconf2.0-cil is not configured yet.
 tomboy depends on libgmime2.2-cil (>= 2.2.3); however:
  Package libgmime2.2-cil is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing tomboy (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of ubuntu-desktop:
 ubuntu-desktop depends on f-spot; however:
  Package f-spot is not configured yet.
 ubuntu-desktop depends on tomboy; however:
  Package tomboy is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing ubuntu-desktop (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libmono1.0-cil:
 libmono1.0-cil depends on mono-runtime (>= 1.0); however:
  Package mono-runtime is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libmono1.0-cil (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libgnome2.0-cil:
 libgnome2.0-cil depends on libgconf2.0-cil (>= 2.15.0); however:
  Package libgconf2.0-cil is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libgnome2.0-cil (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 mono-gac
 libdbus-1-cil
 libgmime2.2-cil
 f-spot
 mono-runtime
 libgconf2.0-cil
 tomboy
 ubuntu-desktop
 libmono1.0-cil
 libgnome2.0-cil
root@fire:~#

**************** snip (end) ********************

I was wondering.. out of memory? on a Machine with 512MByte RAM and as much swap space?

The output of top during the first hang looks like this:

**************** snip (start) **********************

top - 13:12:15 up 1 day, 12:20, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.11
Tasks: 58 total, 1 running, 56 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 4.5%us, 0.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 93.8%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 515112k total, 509320k used, 5792k free, 60056k buffers
Swap: 570288k total, 0k used, 570288k free, 359952k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 5047 marc 17 0 3000 1440 1112 S 5.6 0.3 14:50.26 top
25913 marc 15 0 2992 1344 1024 R 5.6 0.3 0:00.07 top
    1 root 16 0 1888 832 720 S 0.0 0.2 0:03.34 init
    2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
    3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
    4 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.64 events/0
    5 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.07 khelper
    6 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
[...]

**************** snip (end) **********************

How do "SystemOutOfMemory" and almost completely unused
swap space fit together?

thanks for the assistance!

Marc