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joejje
n00b
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Posts: 20
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 Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2005 10:48 am Post subject: install gentoo on a pentium w/32mb ram(?) |
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has anyone here tried installing gentoo on a low-spec system like a pentium mmx with 32MB ram? gentoo is supposed to require 64MB, but i've heard of people installing it on systems with lesser amount of ram.
is there any tricks/tips i should be aware of? |
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dieterv
n00b
Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 59
Location: Wervik, Belgium
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| Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2005 11:48 am Post subject: |
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Hi there,
I installed gentoo on a pentium mmx 166mhz with 16mb ram and it's running just fine.
The only problem I had with the initial install is that there was not enough memory to
extract the stage and portage tarballs. You can solve this by hooking up
the old harddisk to a newer/more capable computer, chrooting into that disk as
described in the handbook and doing your thing. You can even do the complete
installation this way (saves lots of time), except for the rebooting part, where you put
the disk back in your old computer. From that point on I havent had any problems with
the low amount of ram, even when upgrading, but the machine only serves as a fileserver.
Hope this helps,
Dieter |
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dieterv
n00b
Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 59
Location: Wervik, Belgium
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| Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2005 11:53 am Post subject: |
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hmm, forgot to say I also tweaked a bunch of config files,
inittab being one of them (one tty is more than enough for a fileserver)
This saves you 600kb ram per agetty that's not executed that can be put to use 
mvg,
Dieter |
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joejje
n00b
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Posts: 20
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| Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2005 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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| dieterv wrote: | hmm, forgot to say I also tweaked a bunch of config files,
inittab being one of them (one tty is more than enough for a fileserver)
This saves you 600kb ram per agetty that's not executed that can be put to use
mvg,
Dieter |
thanks a bunch. now i dare switch from slackware on my old pc. and thanks for such speedy reply  |
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chovy
Guru
Joined: 03 Dec 2004
Posts: 453
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 5:54 am Post subject: |
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speaking of ram, anyeone know how i can find out how much ram is recongized by gentoo (no X yet).
When I boot up, sometimes the bios does the full 756MB test, othertiems it stops at 256MB, not sure if that means my system is only using 256MB when that happens.
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Woof, Woof! Add "[solved]" to the title! Woof, Woof! |
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slycordinator
Advocate
Joined: 31 Jan 2004
Posts: 3065
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 7:48 am Post subject: |
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| chovy wrote: | speaking of ram, anyeone know how i can find out how much ram is recongized by gentoo (no X yet).
When I boot up, sometimes the bios does the full 756MB test, othertiems it stops at 256MB, not sure if that means my system is only using 256MB when that happens. |
If your bios is only seeing 256MB sometimes that might mean some of your sticks are bad. Also, I believe that gentoo (and any other OS for that matter) determines the amount of memory by asking the BIOS. But I'm no expert. |
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jtaylor72
Apprentice
Joined: 01 Feb 2004
Posts: 197
Location: "the can", WA
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 7:54 am Post subject: |
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| will show you, so will so will |
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slycordinator
Advocate
Joined: 31 Jan 2004
Posts: 3065
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 8:01 am Post subject: |
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| dieterv wrote: | Hi there,
I installed gentoo on a pentium mmx 166mhz with 16mb ram and it's running just fine.
The only problem I had with the initial install is that there was not enough memory to
extract the stage and portage tarballs. You can solve this by hooking up
the old harddisk to a newer/more capable computer, chrooting into that disk as
described in the handbook and doing your thing. You can even do the complete
installation this way (saves lots of time), except for the rebooting part, where you put
the disk back in your old computer. From that point on I havent had any problems with
the low amount of ram, even when upgrading, but the machine only serves as a fileserver.
Hope this helps,
Dieter |
I did something similar.
I created a partition on my fast computer for the old computer's installation. I created an image of this partition using partimage. Then I found a statically built version of partimage (it's a program that saves/restores partitions). I ran partimage's daemon on the fast computer. Then on the slow computer I put in a livecd and copied over the version of partimage I used. Then I ran partimage on the old computer and told it to restore the partition from the image file stored on the other computer over the network.
Note: If you use a normal version of partimage, restoring over the network will not work. The statically-built version I used was designed to remove partimage's default features that make networking fail.
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/partimage/partimage-0.6.4-static.tar.bz2?download
The above link will have both the partimage and partimaged executables. |
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Installing Gentoo
