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Date:      Tue, 01 Mar 2005 13:55:32 -0700 (MST)
From:      Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To:        jhb@FreeBSD.org
Cc:        bmah@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/installation/common install.sgml
Message-ID:  <20050301.135532.39196899.imp@bsdimp.com>
In-Reply-To: <200503011529.15251.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <86acpnmzih.fsf@xps.des.no> <20050301.094356.112814615.imp@bsdimp.com> <200503011529.15251.jhb@FreeBSD.org>

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From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/installation/c=
ommon install.sgml
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 15:29:15 -0500

> On Tuesday 01 March 2005 11:43 am, M. Warner Losh wrote:
> > In message: <86acpnmzih.fsf@xps.des.no>
> >
> >             des@des.no (Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav) writes:
> > : John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> writes:
> > : > How about a custom boot kernel?  When I suggested 12MB rather t=
han
> > : > 7MB in the original PR, I was thinking of the case of building =
a
> > : > stripped-down custom kernel.  GENERIC certainly isn't going to =
fit
> > : > well in 16MB.
> > :
> > : A custom kernel should work better.  I figured out that the "miss=
ing"
> > : memory is in fact the memory used by the kernel, so a system with=
 a
> > : trimmed kernel should have a lot more memory available.  I'll run=
 some
> > : more tests...
> >
> > I've booted a stripped down (but not minimal) kernel with
> > hw.physmem=3D10M to single user, but couldn't even get to multi-use=
r
> > with 16M:  Too many processes and too much swapping (I didn't trim =
my
> > enabled list on my laptop).  If I booted a minimal kernel, and did
> > some creative trimming, I think I can get down closer to 6M to 8M o=
n a
> > fairly small system (no acpi, etc), but it would be painful to run =
in
> > that environemnt, unless you had special needs (eg, it was an embed=
ded
> > platform).
> =

> Then I think we should just say 24MB is the minimum required for both=
 install =

> and running given all the comments.  It will also simplify the docs i=
f we =

> just go with one number for minimum memory requirement.

I agree.  I neglected to explicitly state the point I was trying to
make: While expert users might be able to make slower, smaller
hardware configurations work, in general we should go with more
conservative numbers.  In the 'embedded' or 'embedding' documentation
maybe we should mention the possibility of hand-crafted versions of
FreeBSD running in much less memory that for normal users.

Warner



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