From owner-freebsd-stable Fri Jan 18 10:52:43 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from vms1.rit.edu (vms1.isc.rit.edu [129.21.3.8]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B366C37B416 for ; Fri, 18 Jan 2002 10:52:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from sonic.rit.edu ([129.21.12.38]) by ritvax.isc.rit.edu (PMDF V5.2-32 #40294) with ESMTPA id <01KD7VXCFHCUDGL9LH@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> for freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG; Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:52:26 EST Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:51:57 -0500 From: Matt Penna Subject: Re: FreeBSD Memory Requirements Legacy and Present In-reply-to: <3C47AE08.24F97802@www.kuzbass.ru> X-Sender: mdp1261@vmspop.isc.rit.edu To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: Eugene Grosbein , "Brian T.Schellenberger" , Gregory Bond , Steve Wills , Michael Sierchio , Wilko Bulte , John Utz , "David W. Chapman Jr." Message-id: <5.1.0.14.2.20020118130619.01d954f0@vmspop.isc.rit.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT References: <5.1.0.14.2.20020117210634.01d8eec0@vmspop.isc.rit.edu> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG First of all, my thanks to everyone who responded. I'll address several people's comments simultaneously so I don't clutter the list with multiple messages. From Steve Wills: >I could probably go though and test out performance on various ram >sizes for verification/second opinion for you if you want. But, it might not >happen until next weekend. A very generous offer, Steve! I may take you up on that, but no worries if it falls through. I have a number of older systems myself and should have ample equipment for testing. (P.S. 486es with PCI are not easy to find! Want to sell it? :) From Eugene Grosbein: >4.2 was the last release that can be installed from FTP using NIC >with 8Mb RAM/no swap. It's still possible to install 4.4-RELEASE >from FTP using NIC with 8Mb RAM but the first step in sysinstall must >be allocation of some swap space and activating it with key 'W' >in Label Editor screen. Otherwise, sysinstall will run out of memory while >configuring ethernet interface. Great information, Eugene! One bit of trivia: In my original message, I mentioned that I successfully installed 4.3-Release on a 386 with 8MB/no swap, and that was via FTP using a LAN connection to the Internet. Apparently I got extremely lucky on that system. Someone posted to -questions a short time after I did and said their install failed on a machine with identical specs, so I presume the difference has to do with the hardware configuration of the two systems. To Brian T.Schellenberger: This is why I was hesitant to use my own experience as the example, because it appears it was just a fluke and will not work in most situations. I might mention it in the revision, but only as a an example of what *might* work; I'm most interested in what *will* work. I'll see how it turns out. Very sage advice, in general, though. Is an FTP install the most memory intensive of the various install types? The allocation of swap space during the install is a great bit of information I didn't have previously, so I'll be sure to mention that in my revisions. You mention that an install will succeed with 8MB and some swap - will it work with less physical memory as long as swap is allocated? If you don't know the answer, no problem; I can simply try it out when I have easy access to a low-memory machine. (I just moved to a new house and a lot of my hardware is not here yet.) To Michael Sierchio, Gregory Bond, Wilko Bulte, John Utz, David Chapman and others who commented on memory pricing and availability: All valid points. In addition to the situation where you're using very old hardware that takes 30-pin SIMMs (which are now pretty hard to find, unless you want 512K or smaller modules :P ), there are some machines that simply cannot take large amounts of memory, even if you are able to find the hardware. I have more than one 386 that will not recognize more than 16MB of memory, even if more memory is installed. Some machines simply can't be upgraded beyond a certain point, but in the UNIX community, "ancient" machines that have trouble running Windows for Workgroups are sitting around acting as DHCP servers, routers and firewalls, and doing an excellent job. IMHO, it's important not to dismiss very old equipment as unimportant and stop supporting it, because frequently a user new to FreeBSD (or OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, or whatever) will want to try it out on a second computer - often one that is so old, someone else is giving it away or even throwing it out. Also, though I don't speak from personal experience, I've been told by many people who travel extensively - especially to parts of Eastern Europe - that in some places, new equipment is simply not available or is completely unaffordable. Leading people to believe FreeBSD only runs on new, shiny machines might discourage them from trying FreeBSD at all, and I think we'll all agree that's a bad thing. :) Again, I appreciate all the responses. Feel free to comment further. Matt -- Matt Penna mdp1261@rit.edu ICQ: 399825 S0ba on AOLIM "The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots." -Dr. Who To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message