[gentoo-user] Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[gentoo-user] Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan]

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Hi,

I have an old Pentium machine with 64MB RAM that I planned to install
Gentoo.

I download Gentoo x86 minimal ISO and burn it to disk. The disk was able to
boot, but not able to give the command prompt, with error "cp: write error:
No space left on device" during copying to tempfs

This symptom is reproducible in Virtualbox with 64MB RAM.

Any idea how to overcome this issue?

Gentoo documentation mention that Gentoo should be installable on 64MB RAM
machine.

Thanks.


-- 
Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[Dirk Uys]

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Hi

I think that any of the live CDs are going to give you problems with 64MB
RAM. I think the minimal ISO is a live CD that allows you to install Gentoo
from there. You can try installing another distro on the harddrive and then
installing gentoo using that distro.

Compiling Gentoo on such an old machine is very brave, I hope you intend to
use distcc.

Regards
Dirk

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 10:32 AM, Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan <
sharuzzaman@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have an old Pentium machine with 64MB RAM that I planned to install
> Gentoo.
>
> I download Gentoo x86 minimal ISO and burn it to disk. The disk was able to
> boot, but not able to give the command prompt, with error "cp: write error:
> No space left on device" during copying to tempfs
>
> This symptom is reproducible in Virtualbox with 64MB RAM.
>
> Any idea how to overcome this issue?
>
> Gentoo documentation mention that Gentoo should be installable on 64MB RAM
> machine.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> --
> Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan]

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Hi Dirk,

Yes I noticed that. Most websites that I search for did not recommend
running Linux live-cd on 64MB RAM.

Looks like to have to search for distro that is tailored for embedded
system.

Thanks.



On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 4:49 PM, Dirk Uys <dirkcuys@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
> I think that any of the live CDs are going to give you problems with 64MB
> RAM. I think the minimal ISO is a live CD that allows you to install Gentoo
> from there. You can try installing another distro on the harddrive and then
> installing gentoo using that distro.
>
> Compiling Gentoo on such an old machine is very brave, I hope you intend to
> use distcc.
>
> Regards
> Dirk
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 10:32 AM, Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan <
> sharuzzaman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have an old Pentium machine with 64MB RAM that I planned to install
>> Gentoo.
>>
>> I download Gentoo x86 minimal ISO and burn it to disk. The disk was able
>> to boot, but not able to give the command prompt, with error "cp: write
>> error: No space left on device" during copying to tempfs
>>
>> This symptom is reproducible in Virtualbox with 64MB RAM.
>>
>> Any idea how to overcome this issue?
>>
>> Gentoo documentation mention that Gentoo should be installable on 64MB RAM
>> machine.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan
>>
>
>


-- 
Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[Dale]

Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan wrote:
> Hi Dirk,
>
> Yes I noticed that. Most websites that I search for did not recommend 
> running Linux live-cd on 64MB RAM.
>
> Looks like to have to search for distro that is tailored for embedded 
> system.
>
> Thanks.
>

You may want to check on Damn Small Linux.  One of the older versions 
may work with that amount of ram.

All that said, I'm not sure what you can run on that either.  When you 
go to compile something, you are going to run out of ram very quickly.  
Just booting up is going to need that much.  Running anything on top of 
that is going to be very slow.  I would also put a good amount of swap 
on there too.  It may be slow but it may also prevent a crash.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[Alex Schuster]

Dale writes:

> Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan wrote:

> > Yes I noticed that. Most websites that I search for did not recommend
> > running Linux live-cd on 64MB RAM.
> > 
> > Looks like to have to search for distro that is tailored for embedded
> > system.
> > 
> > Thanks.
> 
> You may want to check on Damn Small Linux.  One of the older versions
> may work with that amount of ram.

They all will, DSL normally needs only 16 MB of RAM. But be sure to use the 
slightly larger DSL-N version, because it has the 2.6 version of the linux 
kernel. Normal DSL uses kernel 2.4, and this will not allow to chroot.

Here are some other small distributions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Linux_distribution

Wow, BasicLinux only needs 3MB (with kernel 2.2). And Tiny Core Linux would 
even run from RAM, but I do not know if it uses kernel 2.6.

But as Dale wrote, compiling also needs some RAM. Installing a stage3 system 
would work, maybe also compiling the kernel (although that (and 
/lib/modules) could probably be copied from the live-cd). But compiling more 
would not be fun. Distcc would help, but maybe creating the binary packages 
on another machine would be better. 

Um, why do you want to use gentoo on such a system anyway? If it will be a 
text-only system, being used as router or something, okay, this would 
probably work, but other distros could do this as well.

I was also tempted to put Gentoo onto an old PIII laptop with 192 MB of RAM, 
just because I had trouble with other distros - Ubuntu sucks. But then I 
restrained from doing this.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[Daniel da Veiga]

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On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 09:27, Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> wrote:

> Um, why do you want to use gentoo on such a system anyway? If it will be a
> text-only system, being used as router or something, okay, this would
> probably work, but other distros could do this as well.
>

I have run and mantained a Pentium 100 (yeah, I know), with 48MB of RAM
(EDO) running for 2 years straight, it served DHCP, HTTP, FTP and MySQL to
around 90 stations with not much traffic or requests. I strongly recomend
distcc, but some packages refuse to use it (notably gcc and glibc, AFAIK) so
prepare for some compile time. I recall spending 5 days in a GCC compile...
Anyway, they said it couldn't be done, and I did it, lol.

The old Gentoo minimal was able to boot in this system with some tricks
(using a floppy to load the CDROM boot, cause obviously the BIOS was unable
to boot from CD and some parameters passed to LILO disabling almost every
module).

Last time I tested, DSL-N was able to boot and install Gentoo with no
problems in such a system.

-- 
Daniel da Veiga

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[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 02/18/2011 11:21 AM, Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan wrote:
> Hi Dirk,
>
> Yes I noticed that. Most websites that I search for did not recommend
> running Linux live-cd on 64MB RAM.
>
> Looks like to have to search for distro that is tailored for embedded
> system.
>
> Thanks.

You could also try Arch Linux, since by default you only get a console 
and from there you install only what you need.  I like it, because like 
Gentoo, it's also a rolling-release distro.

[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo minimal CD not runable on 64MB RAM machine

[James]

Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan <sharuzzaman <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> Hi,I have an old Pentium machine with 64MB RAM that I planned 
to install Gentoo.

Nils posted a new i586 iso here:

ftp://one.tisys.org/pub/linux/tisys/gentoo

see the feb 8th Nils discussion in gentoo-user.

There use to be an old project (GNAP) that
did amazing things with old hardware, but, it
has languished the last few years....

Alternatively, join the gentoo-embedded list
as there are many folks that deal with minimalistic
systems, of various architecture there.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/handbook/

Myself and others are working to document x86 system
building for old hardware, but it's a work in progress
and a few months away from being ready for public
consumption.......


hth,
James