What is minimum RAM to install?

[Janina Sajka]

Is 64mB the minimum RAM required for installation these days?

I cannot find a reference in the Installation Guide for Shrike, so I'm
askint on the list. I know that I failed on an old Pentium that had only
32mb, and I couldn't think of any other reason for that failure.

PS: I note Suse is now requiring 96mb. So, is maybe even 64 not enough
for RH?

[Stephen Smoogen]

I think that 64MB was the minimum for 9. That is doing only a text 
INSTALL. Upgrades and X take significantly more memory. For Severn, I 
dont have an idea.. my last low memory box got fried a couple of months 
ago :(.

On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Is 64mB the minimum RAM required for installation these days?
>
> I cannot find a reference in the Installation Guide for Shrike, so I'm
> askint on the list. I know that I failed on an old Pentium that had only
> 32mb, and I couldn't think of any other reason for that failure.
>
> PS: I note Suse is now requiring 96mb. So, is maybe even 64 not enough
> for RH?

[Martin Stricker]

Stephen Smoogen wrote:
> I think that 64MB was the minimum for 9. That is doing only a text
> INSTALL. Upgrades and X take significantly more memory. For Severn, I
> dont have an idea.. my last low memory box got fried a couple of
> months ago :(.
>
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > Is 64mB the minimum RAM required for installation these days?

If you need to install RHL on a machine with less memory, try out the
RULE installers at http://www.rule-project.org/. Miniconda, based on Red
Hat's Anaconda installer, needs 12 MB, while the shellscript-based
Slinky works nice on 8 MB. Both install only a base system, because
calculating the correct installation order of the RPM packages is one of
the most RAM-hungry steps of the installation. You can then go and
install the missing pieces afterwards.

If RULE doesn't fit your needs, you can put your harddrive into a
computer with sufficient RAM, install it there and put it back. Red
Hat's hardware detection software Kudzu should handle this well - it
does for me.

Or try to get th missing RAM for a few hours just for the install.

Best regards,
Martin Stricker

[Michael Schwendt]

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On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 14:16:28 -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Is 64mB the minimum RAM required for installation these days?
>
> I cannot find a reference in the Installation Guide for Shrike, so I'm
> askint on the list. I know that I failed on an old Pentium that had only
> 32mb, and I couldn't think of any other reason for that failure.
>
> PS: I note Suse is now requiring 96mb. So, is maybe even 64 not enough
> for RH?

For Shrike:

http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/technical/

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[jdow]

I'm not sure I'd want to bet on that, Michael. I just installed "everything"
on a "bang-it-around" box with 256Megs of ram. I downloaded all the updates,
culled out the earlier updates on those packages that were updated twice,
reserved the actual kernel update, and attempted "rpm -Uvh *". Some of the
post install scripts failed.

(I recovered by using "rpm -Uvh --force" on modest subsets of the 100+
update RPMs. They installed flawlessly under those conditions.(

By the way, why is there only an i686 nptl-devel package when it
appears to be required for glibc-devel and rpmlib?

{^_-}   <- has been known to be too impatient for her own good.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Schwendt"
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 14:16:28 -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > Is 64mB the minimum RAM required for installation these days?
> >
> > I cannot find a reference in the Installation Guide for Shrike, so I'm
> > askint on the list. I know that I failed on an old Pentium that had only
> > 32mb, and I couldn't think of any other reason for that failure.
> >
> > PS: I note Suse is now requiring 96mb. So, is maybe even 64 not enough
> > for RH?
>
> For Shrike:
>
> http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/technical/

[Barry K. Nathan]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 01:39:26PM -0700, jdow wrote:
> By the way, why is there only an i686 nptl-devel package when it
> appears to be required for glibc-devel and rpmlib?

Because Red Hat only compiles NPTL for i686.

I have glibc RPMs with NPTL for i486 here (for Red Hat 9; it's been too
long since I tried for Rawhide, but I won't have another chance to try
again for at least a couple of weeks):

http://math.uci.edu/~bnathan/linux/glibc/glibc-2.3.2-27.9.2bkn/

The i486 packages seem to work on an i686 box. I no longer have any real
i486 or i586 boxes, and when I posted about this on rpm-list, nobody
with an i586 box ever replied to me. If nobody tries this on a real i586
box, I could try to emulate an i586 one way or another, but that's
another thing I haven't had time to do yet.

(Before you ask, I've noticed that RPM 4.x.y, for values of x >= 1,
seems to be more stable when NPTL is around, and I imagine I will have
to upgrade some i586 boxes (not my own) to Red Hat 9 or later at some
point in the near future.)

-Barry K. Nathan

Testing NPTL on i586 [was: What is minimum RAM to install?]

[Martin Stricker]

"Barry K. Nathan" wrote:
> http://math.uci.edu/~bnathan/linux/glibc/glibc-2.3.2-27.9.2bkn/
>
> The i486 packages seem to work on an i686 box. I no longer have any
> real i486 or i586 boxes, and when I posted about this on rpm-list,
> nobody with an i586 box ever replied to me. If nobody tries this on
> a real i586 box, I could try to emulate an i586 one way or another,
> but that's another thing I haven't had time to do yet.

I'm typing this on a *real* i586 (Intel Pentium 166 MMX). I can do a
fresh install of RHL 9 here (empty 4 GB partition). Please tell me what
to do for the test, and I'll do it, maybe next weekend.

By the way, I also have a real i486, but I still need to check the
hardware and get a decent-sized harddrive for it. But after that, I
offer to test there as well. Don't worry about trashed installs - it
will be a installation testing machine for RULE anyway...

Best regards,
Martin Stricker

Testing NPTL on i586 [was: What is minimum RAM to install?]

[Leonard den Ottolander]

Hi Martin,
> By the way, I also have a real i486, but I still need to check the
> hardware and get a decent-sized harddrive for it.

The problem with 486's is that it's quite annoying to use anaconda to 
install the system since 8.0. The missing i386 kernel will cause all 
packages to complain about missing depencies (ie the kernel) which will 
cause the install to take ages to complete. If you want to install on a 486 
you'ld rather use another means of installation (rpm --root <mounted 
partition> -i $(cat packs) from a system with a compatible version of rpm).

Bye,
Leonard.

--
How clean is a war when you shoot around nukelar waste?
Stop the use of depleted uranium ammo!
End all weapons of mass destruction.

Testing NPTL on i586 [was: What is minimum RAM to install?]

[Martin Stricker]

Leonard den Ottolander wrote:
> > By the way, I also have a real i486, but I still need to check the
> > hardware and get a decent-sized harddrive for it.
>
> The problem with 486's is that it's quite annoying to use anaconda
> to install the system since 8.0. The missing i386 kernel will cause
> all packages to complain about missing depencies (ie the kernel)
> which will cause the install to take ages to complete. If you want
> to install on a 486 you'ld rather use another means of installation
> (rpm --root <mounted partition> -i $(cat packs) from a system with
> a compatible version of rpm).

Nope, that's what the RULE ISO image is made for. *grin* Look at
http://www.rule-project.org/ - it was founded to use Red Hat Linux on
platforms where Anaconda will no longer install the system.

Best regards,
Martin Stricker

Testing NPTL on i586 [was: What is minimum RAM to install?]

[Barry K. Nathan]

On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 09:39:46PM +0200, Martin Stricker wrote:
> "Barry K. Nathan" wrote:
> > http://math.uci.edu/~bnathan/linux/glibc/glibc-2.3.2-27.9.2bkn/
> >
> > The i486 packages seem to work on an i686 box. I no longer have any
> > real i486 or i586 boxes, and when I posted about this on rpm-list,
> > nobody with an i586 box ever replied to me. If nobody tries this on
> > a real i586 box, I could try to emulate an i586 one way or another,
> > but that's another thing I haven't had time to do yet.
>
> I'm typing this on a *real* i586 (Intel Pentium 166 MMX). I can do a
> fresh install of RHL 9 here (empty 4 GB partition). Please tell me what
> to do for the test, and I'll do it, maybe next weekend.

Sorry, I didn't have a chance to reply earlier.

I guess you should install RHL 9 on an i[45]86, then rpm -Uvh
glibc-2.3.2-27.9.2bkn.i486.rpm, glibc-common-2.3.2-27.9.2bkn.i386.rpm,
and any other glibc RPMs needed to resolve dependencies. Then reboot
(just to make sure things work afterward -- I'm guessing you'll see tons
of segfaults if things are broken), and run the following command:
getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION

and make sure it responds with NPTL not linuxthreads.

There might be other stuff to try for testing, but the above is a good
start.

-Barry K. Nathan