HD Install :: 8MB of system memory - need to circumvent ramdisk

Quote (^thehatsrule^ @ Nov. 09 2006,16:58)

Wasn't it 16mb for X? (Do you need X?)

I was speculating that the 16MB requirement was due to the ramdisk.. it very well could be more related to X. In fact I think my tests just proved that it's for X. My HD install will run in text mode with 8MB of ram, but when I run Xvesa, the screen goes black, and the hard drive spins for a while, then it just hangs on the black screen.

Do I need X? Only if it's required in order to make the machine appealing enough for someone to use it. I personally will not use it; I just want to make it useful for someone. If it can browse the web, that will probably be adequite.

Quote (^thehatsrule^ @ Nov. 09 2006,16:58)

See Local Startup Docs in the wiki for hd and frugal installs (use search for more info)

I tried the frugal install, and got a "missing operating system" error. I verified that the HDD actually contained something, and the partition was active, so I'm not sure why it was not bootable. I had to do a full install in order to get something that would boot.

Did you put a swap? I used swap to make up for lack of memory on a install. It's slower but it might get you to X.

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I looked at the requirements for BasicLinux, and found it surprizing that the native linux installation requires 12 MB of ram, while the version that runs as a layer on top of DOS requires less memory (3MB).

The 12 MB requirement is when using a ramdisk (like DSL's toram option) and 3 MB is for a more "normal" linux installation. And I think you need 8 MB for X.

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If it can browse the web, that will probably be adequite.

In linux you can forget graphical browsing with only 8 MB - I guess you could do it by using the text based links or lynx browsers.

DSL frugal installation uses a ramdisk regardless - toram copies the entire 50mb DSL base to it... I wouldn't do that with <64mb of RAM.

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I tried the frugal install, and got a "missing operating system" error.

That's probably some bootloader issue... (ie not being installed properly)

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In linux you can forget graphical browsing with only 8 MB - I guess you could do it by using the text based links or lynx browsers.

I'm pretty sure someone has gotten that to work somewhat

And Deli Linux, etc. may be a better choice in this situation (afaik uses uclibc, etc.)

Quote (kerry @ Nov. 14 2006,01:41)

Did you put a swap? I used swap to make up for lack of memory on a install. It's slower but it might get you to X.

I did not use (or need) a swap partition for the installation itself because that was done on a machine with 64MB of ram. I did create a swap partition before moving the HDD to the 486 with 8MB ram.

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