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Date:      Wed, 21 May 2003 22:36:02 -0400
From:      mj001 <mj001@rogers.com>
To:        Zer0 <ellen.macisaac@ns.sympatico.ca>
Cc:        freebsd-newbies <freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: minimum system requirements
Message-ID:  <3ECC3792.9040502@rogers.com>
References:  <002001c31f98$32259640$9600000a@medkat> <3ECBB074.9010601@ns.sympatico.ca>

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Zer0 wrote:
> camaleon wrote:
> 
>> Hi, I'm new here, but right away I do have a question
>> that can lead to many answers (or even none at all ;)
>>
>> I am considering installing FreeBSD on a very old machine,
>> but I'm not sure if that will succeed. The reason for this
>> is fun (to begin with) and perhaps later a very modest
>> internet server in a small home network connected to the
>> internet via a multiport ADSL modem. Another reason is
>> using an operating system that has staying power and has
>> proven itself in the past and that can be configuered both
>> as a webserver and as an email server.
>>
>> The system is a 486DX2 66 MHz, with (only) 14 Mbs of RAM,
>> a (recent) cd-rom drive and a harddisk of (only) 325 Mb.
>> There are two floppy drives, a 3.5 inch and a 5.25 inch.
>> The videocard is a Western Digital with a something-C33
>> chipset (if I remember well, couldn't find the manual
>> right now). There is a SB 16 AWE-32 PnP soundcard, a
>> 3Com 3C509b ethernet card and an Edimax ethernet card
>> installed, both ethernet cards can be set to either PnP-modus
>> or non-PnP-modus.
>>
>> I have the experience of installing Slackware on this
>> machine, allthough the hard drive space was larger in the
>> past, where a second drive of respectively 421 Mb (and
>> Slackware 3.6 and 4.0), 1,5 Gb (and Slackware 7.0), and 20 Gb
>> (with Slackware 7.0 and 7.1) used to be installed
>> (I want to remove the 20 Gb drive to use it in another
>> machine). I did configure a small webserver with apache on this
>> configuration(s) and an email server with sendmail.
>>
>> Will it be feasable with this little hard drive capacity and
>> this little memory resources?
>>
>> - camaleon :)
>>
> Take a look at http://neon1.net/misc/minibsd.html
> I can't as yet vouch for the feasibility of this as I have yet to try it 
> myself but it might be a nudge in the right direction.
> 
> 
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> 

I used to run FreeBSD (2.1.5!) on a 486DX33 with 20 MB of
memory, and a 200 MB disk.  It would even run X Windows, but
this was before the days of KDE or GNOME.  As I remember, I
did get it to run with 8 MB, including X-Windows, but it
was pathetically slow.  At 20 MB, the performance improved
considerably.

I think you will be fine if you don't need X-Windows.




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