Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 15:19:25 +0100 (CET) From: Marc Schneiders <marc@oldserver.demon.nl> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 4 MB RAM? (long) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912301456410.6748-100000@propro.oldserver.demon.nl> In-Reply-To: <19991230154737.A1316@freebie.lemis.com>
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On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, Greg Lehey wrote: > 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? > I mean that both drives are spinning, making sound. As I have swap on just one of them, it is not just swapping. Whether there is really access I cannot tell. The box does not answer me :-) > > 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. > Thanks! It didn't to me either. I think I copied it faithfully. > > 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. > That was my original idea. But after 4 hours I wanted to get some sleep and imagined the drives would not be happy, especially since they are rather old, if I let them running for another 8 hours. (And by the way: there are no problems after switching the thing off. It says not properly dismounted, but reports no problems with the drives. I've done it four or five times now.) > > 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. > OK. I'll try that. The only report I get is the security one in the mail. Apparently the other one doesn't finish at all. Thank you. > > 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. > Kernel is now 1505688. I threw out most I don't need, like all hardware drivers, ppp, slip, ISO and DOS file systems and the like. I will squeeze out more, as I don't need the serial ports and probably a few other things. I'll have to check a few things I have no idea about as to what they are :-) > > 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. I will give 3.4 (or 3.3 which I have on CD) a try if the rest fails. This isn't that easy, as I have no other box running that at the moment to compile the kernel on. Though I can try that through NFS and with the other 4 MB plugged in for the occasion on the box itself. > 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. > There is 24 MB of swap. I have looked at top a number of times and there was only little of it used. Maybe the daily checks take a lot of it? I will throw them out first and see what happens. > Greg > -- Many thanks for your help! Marc Marc Schneiders marc@venster.nl marc@oldserver.demon.nl propro 2:56pm up 17 days, 15:08, load average: 2.38 2.24 2.09 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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