From owner-freebsd-questions Sat May 2 11:52:00 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA03943 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Sat, 2 May 1998 11:52:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from java.dpcsys.com (java.dpcsys.com [206.16.184.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA03923 for ; Sat, 2 May 1998 11:51:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dan@dpcsys.com) Received: from localhost (dan@localhost) by java.dpcsys.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with SMTP id LAA01044; Sat, 2 May 1998 11:54:55 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 11:54:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Dan Busarow To: Jason cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD on old equipment In-Reply-To: <004101bd75d7$db2b2c20$023aa8c0@kib.kib.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, 2 May 1998, Jason wrote: > I have a rash of older equipment here and wanted to know how compatible > 2.2.5 or 2.2.6 is with older hardware and how well it will run if at all. I > have a rash of 386 boards with 2-16 megs of ram. Will FreeBSD be of any use > for on these sort of machines? I already decided that the 286s won't work > and need to hit the dump :) When I first looked at FreeBSD I installed 2.0.5 (I think) on a 386sx16 with 4meg and a 200M drive. Command line stuff ran just fine. X ran but wasn't really usable :) Somewhere around 2.1.0 the install required 5meg though the system would still run in 4. I have a 486/33 with 4meg acting as a router for 3 subnets with average daily throughput of ~ 600MB. This is 2.1.0-RELEASE trestles: [10] w 1:12PM up 136 days, 56 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 load averages: 0.14, 0.03, 0.01 13:13:38 16 processes: 1 running, 13 sleeping, 2 zombie Cpu states: 0.8% user, 0.0% nice, 1.9% system, 2.7% interrupt, 94.6% idle Memory: 828K Active, 412K Inact, 664K Wired, 48K Cache, 60K Free Swap: 74M Total, 67M Free, 9% Inuse 64Kin 68Kout I think if you go with a baseline of 8meg and a 200M drive you'll be fine. A really minimal install may be doable on a 100. > I guess what I need to know is basic minimiums for FreeBSD. I would like to > run a Router that can IP alias for several machines over a Ethernet Internet > connection. Am I asking too much of this old hardware? Go for it. The small drives may be a problem but for just a router you won't need to add any software over the minimal install. Performance wise, it wasn't really all that long ago that 386DX's were hot stuff and routing doesn't do a whole lot of floating point :) Dan -- Dan Busarow 714 443 4172 DPC Systems / Beach.Net dan@dpcsys.com Dana Point, California 83 09 EF 59 E0 11 89 B4 8D 09 DB FD E1 DD 0C 82 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message