Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 15:47:38 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Marc Schneiders <marc@oldserver.demon.nl> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 4 MB RAM? (long) Message-ID: <19991230154737.A1316@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912300402570.56346-100000@propro.oldserver.demon.nl> References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912300402570.56346-100000@propro.oldserver.demon.nl>
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On Thursday, 30 December 1999 at 4:43:05 +0100, Marc Schneiders wrote: > "All versions of FreeBSD, including 3.0, will RUN in 4MB of ram, they > just can't run the installation program in 4MB. You can add extra > memory for the install process, if you like, and then after the system > is up and running, go back to 4MB. Or you could always just swap your > disk into a system which has >4MB, install onto it and then swap it > back." Thus the FAQ. > > I was planning to do this (put drive in other system) for an old 486 > laptop with 4MB, which isn't really worth the plus $50-100 they charge > for a RAM-card to upgrade. > I tried whether it worked on a desktop first. I installed a 4.0 > snapshot on a 486DX66 with 8MB, which went fine, and > then took 4 MB out. No go with the generic kernel, but well that's in > the FAQ also. It does run with a custom kernel... for a while. The > machine sort of stops responding when the daily checks are being done. > Drives keep running and running. What do you mean by that? That there is constant access? > It spits out one message: > > sendmail[889]: CAA00843: SYSERR(root): timeout writing message to local. Is that really the message? That doesn't make much sense. > This is at 02:51 hours, 51 minutes after the checks start. I > waited for another couple of hours. No change. So I did a cold reboot, > even though the machine wasn't completely dead: the screensaver was > still moving. And it started moving again after stopping it by hitting > a key. Moving from one virtual console to another also still worked. > But that's it. Sounds like extreme memory starvation. Technically, there's nothing to say that the machine isn't running, just that the performance is so bad that you can hardly distinguish it from a hang. > To test the thing I let the box run rc5des, which runs at nice 20 by > default and does take only 800K RAM. I also tried running without > sendmail. Questions I have: > > 1. Anyone with more success? What is the > secret? Kill the daily's? That would be a good idea, anyway. > 2. Will an older version do better on 4 MB? Probably. You could also check your kernel and remove everything you don't absolutely need, assuming you haven't done so already. > I do know about 2.1.7.1. But I do need PCMCIA-support for a ed0 > card. I managed to install 2.1.7 through plip some time ago without > taking the harddisk out. But couldn't find a way to get the network > card running. Well, there's still 3.4. That might be significantly smaller than 4.0. And you do have enough swap space, don't you? If you run low on swap on a machine like that, things will go to hell. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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