The Initrd of an installed version as grown to compressed 40 MB. This means that it needs at least 256 MB RAM (on 128 MB, it decompresses but chrashes later)

So: Is there a method to archive a smaller initrd?

The main contents:
* 7 MB intel microcode (I think these get purged early, so no problem)
* 32 MB "main" initrd", which gets decompressed to 76 MB

the main initrd:
Most in lib
* 12 MB firmware
* 14 MB lib
* 49 MB modules

Most of the firmware is for network stuff. Perhaps it is useful to ask whether it should be used for PXE boot - because if not this is not needed ;-)

Lib: Crypto is about 5 MB. Only needed for crypted devices. (and why libntfs?)

modules:
1.1 M crypto - only needed for cryptsetup and perhaps enforcing secure boot
39 MB drivers
16 MB net - only needed for PXE-boot
1,5 MB infiniband - I think nobody starts this from infiniband^^
8 MB scsi, ok, needed. Exceptions:
1 MB lpfc - "Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel" - is not exactly used that often for boot
0,9 MB qla2xxx - "QLogic Fibre Channel HBA Driver" - is not exactly used that often for boot
0,5 MB bfa - "QLogic BR-series Fibre Channel" - is not exactly used that often for boot

5.3 MB fs - 1.2 MB nfs, only needed for pxeboot
1.5 MB net - only needed for pxeboot

so about 38 MB could be saved.

I want ahead. this made about 37 MB initrd, which gets compressed to 14 MB.

Ok now I got more aggressive and killed more (iscsi, ntfs-3g, fuse, btrfs/f2fs/jfx/xfs, sound) - 31/11 MB.

This did not work, because busybox has an hard dependency to libcrypto. But after adding that back (36/13,7 MB) I got it to work with 128 MB RAM! The whole system needs, regarding the desktop, 52 MB RAM + 7 MB swap.

This works even with only 96 MB. Even with 80 (getting an error not having an suitable RAM region for KASL, but started to desktop). The absolute minimum is 79 MB - Linux reports 63 MB then, the rest (16 MB) got eaten by the kernel.
But my target machine has even less RAM - 64 MB. 15 MB still missing.


Additionally, I think the kernel can use squashfs as initrd, so there is no decompression needed.

Problem: The kernel can not use squashfs as initramfs...

Next try: xz. Important: use --check=crc32, else the kernel can not work with it.

-6 made a 9.9 MB image, but needs too much memory for decompress.
-2 made a 11,4 MB image, but still 79 MB RAM is needed.

No compression of the initrd let grub bark out at a OOM - so no help here as well.

Ok, now I got way more aggressive and delete lots of stuff (forgotten btrfs binary, lots of modules)

-> 29,6 / 11,6 MB

The new RAM limit: 70 MB. Ok, 6 MB to go.

Ok, more killing. I tried to leave most of usb, scsi, ide, pcmcia intact.
Also removed the bin versions of the modules-files.
Additionally, somehow the hard link to busybox between bin and sbin got broken, fixed it with a

while [ true ]; do rdfind -makehardlinks true . ; done

(Type Ctrl+C when no dupplicates are found anymore)

-> 26,8/10,6 MB
The new RAM limit: 66 MB. Only 2 to go!

Tried upx on libcrypto.so.3, libext2fs.so.2.4 and libzstd.so.1.5.4 -> but not good as it kills the exports.

Used it on every binary but the busybox (I'm afraid that this hurts the perfomance too much), killed a forgotten ntfs-3g....

-> 25,6 / 10,5 MB

And it BOOTED with 64 MB!

Edit: You can download the last version of the initrd on
https://mifritscher.de/austausch/dsl/2024-rc6/initrd7 and
https://mifritscher.de/austausch/dsl/202...initrd7.gz .

And a Screenshot:
https://mifritscher.de/austausch/dsl/202...enshot.png

Added German, French, Spanish, Portuguese language support to the "low ram" faster boot startup option
Fixed Mouse Config and Edit Config Files errors in the Control Center
Enabled Root term window option in file manager

Hi dear John,

frugal install - no persistance - 1 go RAM - cpu 1467 mhz - packard bell bv easynote mz35

In Control Center, for me, 2 buttons don't work.

Hardware tab / "Mouse config" option :
nothing happens.

System tab / "Edit Config Files" option :
nothing happens too.

I wish the best for you.

Happy to read you nearly.

Best regards.

Wish to copy Xmms input plugins that  should be have been included: Flac, Musepack, Wavpack and Monkey's Audio to usr/lib/xmms/input. Mod plugin included when most users today don't know what a Mod format is.

Using Zzz fm, under File, Root window, nothng happens. Some days a new window would popup, not now.

How can I copy the files as Root to above directory?

Is there a method to determine either in the install or on CD what the version number of DSL is? Have cd from about June 2024 but did not notice any version number on it.

Hello everyone! I am new to the forum and I am happy that DSL is back in action! Thank you John for resurrecting this awesome project!. 

That being said, I installed DSL on a Qemu/libvirt/kvm VM on Arch Linux and even though it installed correctly, no matter what I do, I cannot get the network to work properly.  When I do a ip addr show, it shows two IP addresses for the eth0 interface:  A 192.168.122.x address, and a 169.254.x.x address.  Also my /etc/resolv.conf file has no nameservers defined in it. I tried to reconfigure the interface using the Network interface tool in Control Center, and I configured the IP to be set by DHCP, but no matter how many times I restart the networking, using  ifdown eth0/ifup eth0, after a minute or so, the damn 169 address appears again and networking completely stops.  I even tried setting the IP as a static IP, but still, the 169 address shows up.  Any idea as to what might be the issue and how I can fix this permanently? or is this a misconfiguration in the base install of DSL?

Thank you and please let me know if you need any more information!

https://imgur.com/a/iivcFQ2
Pic 1

I am launching through Ventoy, and other isos (ex: Knoppix) generate the same error at launch. Is there a file that I am missing, or, can I change a launch option in DSL to enable x64? 

Thanks

Update:

I tried running DSL live from the usb without Ventoy, just Unetbootin and dsl-2024.rc6.lz4 as DSL suggests, and I get the following boot error (no recognized boot device). I tried booting from the usb with and without safe boot. Still haven't been able to get DSL running with any method.


https://imgur.com/a/1d0kU6v
Pic 2

Hi, I'm relatively new to Linux but got everything working so far  

Is there a simple solution to autostart a program (like plex server)when I boot up the system? My goal is to sometimes shut the server down, but when I need I only want to press the button on the device and everything should start automatically.

I tried
- using systemd commands, but DSL doesn't use that? Should/can I install? 
- .config/autostart (the .desktop files work but they don't autostart
- crontab -e? No luck either.

[e] fixed
I made this more complicated than it needed to be In the end it was actually very simple:
In /home there is a folder called /.desktop-session/ (maybe you have to use CTRL+H to make it visible) with a "startup" file. There you can add commands/scripts you want to execute after boot.
--> /home/.desktop-session/startup
I simply opened it, added my command at the end (I also added a "&" because all the other lines had it), saved and rebooted. Finally worked, after two evenings of looking for

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 (P3, 533MHz, 128MB RAM) and am really having a hard time getting DSL to boot.

Before we begin, I'm a Linux veteran of 30 years, so talk technical, as I shall be doing.

Firstly, the live CD will not boot. Or not past loading the kernel. It just kernel panics. Which is no biggie really, there's ways around that. I'm running the laptop on an 8GB SD card in a 44-pin IDE to SD adapter. So I can install "offline" using my main PC and QEmu, which I have done.  I've made an image of the OS, fully working, using QEmu running with the same specs as the laptop (P3 cpu, 128MB). That was tricky to begin with, as the initrd is too big for 128MB RAM - you can't have an initrd that is more than 1/4 the amount of available space, and at 39MB that's just a few MB too many. But rebuilding the initrd with modules=dep brings it down to a mere 8MB which is perfect.

So... moving it on to the laptop. The kernel boots, and the initrd loads. Then it tries to (as far as I can tell) mount the root filesystem, and fails, and can't run init.  But I cannot work out why.  It doesn't tell me that is what is happening, in so many words, it's what I have inferred from the debug output I can get.  Which is (I had to video capture this and step it frame by frame to get the juicy bits...):

Quote:The error message you get matches the error code EOVERFLOW, which in the open system call is returned if a 32-bit application tries to open a large (>= 2 GB) file:

Quote:EOVERFLOW
pathname refers to a regular file that is too large to be opened. The usual scenario here is that an application compiled on a 32-bit platform without -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 tried to open a file whose size exceeds (1<<31)-1 bytes;

As the text hints, 32-bit applications can access larger files, iff they are compiled with the necessary settings (using larger integers for the relevant data types, and calling the proper versions of the system calls).

It would seem that the application you are running isn't compiled to support large files. And no, you can't change that except by recompiling it or getting a version with large file support.

When eth0 and wlan0 are active, the info is put in one line.

There should be returns to separate the entries right after ${if_up eth0} (2 times) in .conkyrc.

Hello everyone, I have a question to ask, especially for more experts.
I have an old Toshiba satellite pro 4600 with 512mb of ram, with Windows 2000 currently installed, I wanted to know if there is a Linux operating system that can be installed on the PC without problems.
And if this operating system recognizes all the peripherals that make up the laptop, and if it recognizes or is there a way to install the Belkin Wi-Fi card (Wireless G Netbook Card) Model: f5d7010.

A thousand thanks!