iB::Topic::Super Low RAM bootup

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Topic: Super Low RAM bootup, with networking

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cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: May 28 2005,06:00

I have been playing around with dsl boot cheatcodes in search of the combination that provides you with the lowest RAM usage for a text mode bootup, but with networking support.

This would be ideal for low RAM users who are trying to use the HD install script or frugal install via network.

Please bookmark this bootcode set, or better yet, create a new dsl bootcode combination called "lowram" that is like "failsafe" in the syslinux.cfg file for future DSL versions.

Anyways, here goes:

Code Sample

dsl 1 vga=normal atapicd noideraid nosound noapic noacpi acpi=off noscsi noapm nousb nopcmcia nofirewire noagp nomce

SaidinUnleashed Offline

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Posts: 1428
Joined: Mar. 2004

Posted: May 28 2005,06:32

I assume that shouls be "dsl 2 ..." ^_^

You can also add "nofirewire" but I would take nopcmcia out, because

1. lots of laptops need that for their netcards.

2. if cardmgr doesn't find managable slots, it kills itself, and frees up the ram it was using.

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cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: May 29 2005,16:36

No,

Actually it really is "dsl 1"

Why?

dsl 2 boots into runlevel 2, and this creates 4 virtual consoles leading to 4 instances of BASH.

If you boot into runlevel 1, you only get 1 console and one BASH shell process, and this saves RAM.

nofirewire is in there.

I debated myself about including the "nopcmcia" or having pcmcia and I agree that nopcmcia is bad for laptop network users that have a pcmcia NIC card.

However, since the goal was to reduce RAM usage to the extreme, I added "nopcmcia".

Maybe it would be better to have:

lowram

as listed above and also

lowramlaptop

that omits the "nopcmcia" cheatcode.

My vision of these boot modes is to enable the user to boot for the first time and either do an installation, or at least have them boot up long enough to create a DOS swap file or a linux swap partition.

Once this has been accomplished, it should be possible to reboot using a less restrictive boot mode and the user will be able to do more with their system, like maybe X Windows for example.

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Posted: May 29 2005,17:43

Hey cbagger01,

Was this "dsl 1 ..." boot option available all this time? or is it included only on DSL or a recent KNOPPIX release, say 3.4 and later?

Also while on this boot option topic, did anyone try using LOADLIN install (as per DSL Documentation) and used the boot option "2" inside the options.txt file? It did not work on LOADLIN install of DSL, but it works for both LOADLIN install of KNOPPIX (3.3 and later) as well as for DSL LiveCD boot. I am looking through the modifications done on the linuxrc script inside the minirt24.gz file, but I cannot figure out why the boot option "2" gets dropped while all the rest get passed.