RH 9 on old h/w?
Akos Redey
(say RH 9) on an old box (say a 486 with some 64M RAM). Is the minimum
hardware requirements for distros published anywhere? I'm not expecting to
fly, but would it install/run at all? I'd like to replace W95 on some old
machine.
Many thanks,
Akos
Alex Butcher
<http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/technical/>
To be honest though, a modern general purpose distro with a desktop
environment on a 486 is going to be somewhat unpleasant. Something around
the RH4.2/5.2 era might be workable though, or if you use twm instead of
the GNOME/KDE environments...
> Many thanks,
> Akos
Best Regards,
Alex.
--
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Allan K
trying to use RH9 on old hardware for a server or firewall which should be
achievable, but am encountering installation problems.
--
Allan
Ian Northeast
>
> On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 20:35:54 +0000, Akos Redey wrote:
>
> > Does anyone have any experience on installing and running a new distro
> > (say RH 9) on an old box (say a 486 with some 64M RAM). Is the minimum
> > hardware requirements for distros published anywhere? I'm not expecting to
> > fly, but would it install/run at all? I'd like to replace W95 on some old
> > machine.
>
> <http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/technical/>
>
> To be honest though, a modern general purpose distro with a desktop
> environment on a 486 is going to be somewhat unpleasant. Something around
> the RH4.2/5.2 era might be workable though, or if you use twm instead of
> the GNOME/KDE environments...
I would go for a modern but less bloated distro such as Debian (which
would be my choice) or Slackware rather than an ancient RH. If this is
to go anywhere near the Internet there are far too many security
problems to patch in the old distros, and RH no longer issue patches for
anything less than 7 so you have to roll your own.
I agree about Gnome and KDE, the current versions won't work at all well
in 64MB. There are quite a lot of lighter desktop/WM products around.
IceWM is quite popular.
BTW I used to run SuSE 8.1 with KDE on a 64MB P166 but I did used to
whinge about it several times a day, it was not pleasant.
Regards, Ian
Bob Billing (AKA Uncle Bob)
> I would go for a modern but less bloated distro such as Debian (which
> would be my choice) or Slackware rather than an ancient RH. If this is
I have an old laptop on which I could not get RH to install. The current
Debian went straight in with no problems.
Debian didn't auto-detect all the hardware. It's worth scribbling down
all the registry settings from the legacy OS in case you have to input
them again.
--
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and animal lover. 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/
"It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book as a
woman is with child." CS Lewis - Till we have faces, Ch 21.
Alex Butcher
> Alex Butcher wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 20:35:54 +0000, Akos Redey wrote:
>>
>> > Does anyone have any experience on installing and running a new
>> > distro (say RH 9) on an old box (say a 486 with some 64M RAM). Is the
>> > minimum hardware requirements for distros published anywhere? I'm not
>> > expecting to fly, but would it install/run at all? I'd like to
>> > replace W95 on some old machine.
>>
>> <http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/technical/>
>>
>> To be honest though, a modern general purpose distro with a desktop
>> environment on a 486 is going to be somewhat unpleasant. Something
>> around the RH4.2/5.2 era might be workable though, or if you use twm
>> instead of the GNOME/KDE environments...
>
> I would go for a modern but less bloated distro such as Debian (which
> would be my choice) or Slackware rather than an ancient RH. If this is
> to go anywhere near the Internet there are far too many security
> problems to patch in the old distros, and RH no longer issue patches for
> anything less than 7 so you have to roll your own.
This is true, though the damage that can be done is severely limited if
you disable all listening daemons (that still leaves vulnerabilities in
user applications such as PINE, mutt, Netscape etc. though).
I'd even be surprised if you can get a workable Debian or Slackware
_desktop_ system on the OP's machine. Bear in mind most 486s probably have
500MB or less of disc. My original 486 PC is quite unusual in that I
bought it with 1.3GB and later upgraded to 4.3GB. Even then, that was a
bit cramped for Slackware 2.2.0 (admittedly dual-booting with ~440MB
DOS/WFWG 3.11 partition).
> I agree about Gnome and KDE, the current versions won't work at all well
> in 64MB. There are quite a lot of lighter desktop/WM products around.
> IceWM is quite popular.
I recently set up RH8 with GNOME 2.0 on a PII 266 with 64M. It was slow,
but not unbearably so, particularly for the intended (new, inexperienced)
user. But I did explain that adding 20 quids worth of memory would be the
best and cheapest way of making that machine run faster.
> BTW I used to run SuSE 8.1 with KDE on a 64MB P166 but I did used to
> whinge about it several times a day, it was not pleasant.
>
> Regards, Ian
Best Regards,
C. Newport
> I'd even be surprised if you can get a workable Debian or Slackware
> _desktop_ system on the OP's machine. Bear in mind most 486s probably have
> 500MB or less of disc. My original 486 PC is quite unusual in that I
> bought it with 1.3GB and later upgraded to 4.3GB. Even then, that was a
> bit cramped for Slackware 2.2.0 (admittedly dual-booting with ~440MB
> DOS/WFWG 3.11 partition).
I recently installed Slackware 9 on an 800 Mb drive, it was a mail
server so I only installed A and N. ISTR there was about 380 Mb free
which was enough for a demonstration setup.
By picking the Expert option I could have cut that down rather more
leaving out things that were not essential for a dedicated mail
server.
The 486 could be a problem though, I am not sure if the kernels
in Slackware 9 are compiled to support 486 so it is probably
a god idea to check on this.
DeadRat is a definite NO, too much bloat installed by default.
Doctor J. Frink
>On Sunday 27 July 2003 1:07 pm in uk.comp.os.linux Alex Butcher wrote:
>
>> I'd even be surprised if you can get a workable Debian or Slackware
>> _desktop_ system on the OP's machine. Bear in mind most 486s probably have
>> 500MB or less of disc.
486, 24MB RAM, 512MB hdd, Debian (2.0 I think but can't be sure):
XFree
IceWM
Emacs+AucTeX
Tetex
XFig
GV
Xterm
GCC/G77
SSH
Sundry utils
Using about 60MB of swapspace, and still with about 100MB or so of free
disc space for storing data/documents. It was used as a thesis
production machine (on the cheap, computer was a 'skipable' and
installation done by me for nowt).
Now that was a fully usable desktop machine for its intended purpose and
didn't swap like nuts either. YMMV of course.
Frink
--
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See his mind here : http://www.cmp.liv.ac.uk/frink/
Annoy his mind here : pjf at cmp dot liv dot ack dot ook
"Joy!" - Stimpy
Alex Butcher
> On Sunday 27 July 2003 1:07 pm in uk.comp.os.linux Alex Butcher wrote:
>
>
>> I'd even be surprised if you can get a workable Debian or Slackware
>> _desktop_ system on the OP's machine. Bear in mind most 486s probably
>> have 500MB or less of disc. My original 486 PC is quite unusual in that
>> I bought it with 1.3GB and later upgraded to 4.3GB. Even then, that was
>> a bit cramped for Slackware 2.2.0 (admittedly dual-booting with ~440MB
>> DOS/WFWG 3.11 partition).
>
> I recently installed Slackware 9 on an 800 Mb drive, it was a mail
> server so I only installed A and N. ISTR there was about 380 Mb free
> which was enough for a demonstration setup.
Note my emphasis of 'desktop'.
[snip]
> DeadRat is a definite NO, too much bloat installed by default.
The "bloat installed by default" probably includes most of the things one
would want on a typical desktop system.
And for servers, I've established a set of RH8 packages that total
approximately 300MB. That includes all the i18n stuff, all the package
docs and manpages, and a fairly complete perl install with lots of
commonly-used CPAN modules. Trimming (which would make the system broken
in a number of respects IMHO) all but keeping perl (sensible as perl is
almost regarded as a standard shell these days) would bring that down to
222MB, ready for servers such as postfix, samba or whatever to be added.
And now I've done it, I've got a kickstart config file that I can use to
easily repeat this build.
C. Newport
Indeed, I forgot to mention that 256 Mb of the 800 Mb disk was
taken up by swap <B-).
Of course, if we really want a small system DSW then FloppyFW
is going to take some beating.
G.
Trick is too custom install to get going, then remove loads of
documentation, soruces etc.
G.
Alex Butcher
> On Sunday 27 July 2003 7:53 pm in uk.comp.os.linux Alex Butcher wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 15:01:15 +0100, C. Newport wrote:
>>
[snip]
>>> DeadRat is a definite NO, too much bloat installed by default.
>>
>> The "bloat installed by default" probably includes most of the things
>> one would want on a typical desktop system.
>>
>> And for servers, I've established a set of RH8 packages that total
>> approximately 300MB.
[snip]
>> Trimming would bring that down to 222MB, ready for servers such as
>> postfix, samba or whatever to be added.
>>
>> And now I've done it, I've got a kickstart config file that I can use
>> to easily repeat this build.
>
> Indeed, I forgot to mention that 256 Mb of the 800 Mb disk was taken up
> by swap <B-).
I guessed.
My 300/222MB figures don't include swap. The package list does include a
few "optional" things; like (t)ethereal, joe, iptables that could
conceivably be killed, but I like too much to do so.
pbs
>
> I recently set up RH8 with GNOME 2.0 on a PII 266 with 64M. It was slow,
> but not unbearably so, particularly for the intended (new, inexperienced)
> user. But I did explain that adding 20 quids worth of memory would be the
> best and cheapest way of making that machine run faster.
I have RH 5.2 with kernel and other upgrades (including KDE) running on
my laptop which has a PII 266. The X server with that desk top does not
seem to be particularly slow.
I could not get a Redhat 7.x to install on my laptop because the
installer demanded that more than 64K of memory be present. How
did you wok around this with a RH8?
I know I could install later kernel etc, but life is short and I
would perfer to use a distribution.
AWM
"Akos Redey" <ne...@redey.NOSPAM.net> wrote in message
news:slrnbi5ph...@localhost.localdomain...
Forget about the 486 you just run into too much hassle on older machines,
I have lost count of the number I have seen where some major upgrade is done
such as a new hd or operating system and something else goes down the
tubes, such the floppy controller or a serial port.
To do anything worthwhile these days you really need a P2 or AMDK6 with a
speed of over 200mg/hz (there was a big leap in actual performance when
Intel & AMD processors went through 200 mg/hz). A 500 mghz AMD K6 PC100
computer with 128mb ram runs most current Linux distro very sweetly, a
486 would be slow and a nightmare to install on.
Rob W. Norris
Agreed. Although I think a Pentium class base unit is the minimum,
something like 200Mhz can be bought second for about £50 from ebay.
Which should be fine to install and run most W95 equivalents.
--
Rob W. Norris
AMS - Broadoak.
Top Posters Rule? Begin the revolution.
Alex Butcher
> Alex Butcher wrote:
>>
>> I recently set up RH8 with GNOME 2.0 on a PII 266 with 64M. It was
>> slow, but not unbearably so, particularly for the intended (new,
>> inexperienced) user. But I did explain that adding 20 quids worth of
>> memory would be the best and cheapest way of making that machine run
>> faster.
[snip]
> I could not get a Redhat 7.x to install on my laptop because the
> installer demanded that more than 64K of memory be present. How did you
> wok around this with a RH8?
Perform a text, rather than graphical install. In fact, thinking back, it
even worked with the graphical install enabled... curious...
Akos Redey
> And now I've done it, I've got a kickstart config file that I can use to
> easily repeat this build.
How public domain is this? I'd be very interested in a kickstart file, if
you're willing to publish.
Akos
Alex Butcher
Sure:
This configures a user account 'user' with password of 'password', and
the root account with the same. Naturally, you'll change these.
=== auto-generated config -- CUT HERE ===
# Kickstart file automatically generated by anaconda.
install
lang en_US
langsupport --default en_GB.UTF-8 en_GB.UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8
keyboard uk
mouse msintellips/2 --device psaux
skipx
network --device eth0 --bootproto static --ip 10.10.10.10 --netmask 255.255.255.0 --gateway 10.10.10.1 --hostname scratchbox.scratchdomain.pri
rootpw --iscrypted $1$ÌGÑB70ík$.sBykty2itmxuRlciFBxD0
firewall --high --port ssh:tcp
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
timezone --utc Europe/London
bootloader --location=mbr
# The following is the partition information you requested
# Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed
# here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is
# not guaranteed to work
#clearpart --all --drives=hda
#part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=100 --ondisk=hda
#part / --fstype ext3 --size=700 --grow --ondisk=hda
#part swap --size=256 --grow --maxsize=512 --ondisk=hda
%packages
@ British Support
ncftp
-kernel-pcmcia-cs
-portmap
-aspell
-lha
-apmd
-XFree86-libs
-dhclient
-aspell-en-gb
ethereal
-gpm
-lrzsz
isdn4k-utils
-ORBit
-wireless-tools
-fontconfig
-libpng
iptables-ipv6
-specspo
-nfs-utils
-libpng10
libpcap
kernel-utils
-hesiod
-cyrus-sasl-plain
-mtr
-gtk+
-fbset
-htmlview
-freetype
-imlib
-gnome-libs
-pspell
-talk
wvdial
-libjpeg
-XFree86-Mesa-libGL
-sendmail
-procmail
-mtools
-rsh
-ypbind
strace
-redhat-menus
-autofs
joe
-yp-tools
-esound
-minicom
-libtiff
-libungif
-audiofile
%post
/usr/sbin/useradd user
chfn -f 'User Name' user
/usr/sbin/usermod -p '$1$Âåiû.àÆd$/c1/FWcaBDiOtv8IV/of50' user
=== auto-generated config -- CUT HERE ===
=== suggested changes - untested -- CUT HERE ===
--- anaconda-ks.cfg 2003-07-28 19:09:46.000000000 +0100
+++ anaconda-ks-untested.cfg 2003-07-28 19:11:27.000000000 +0100
@@ -77,6 +77,10 @@
-libtiff
-libungif
-audiofile
+-comps
+-irda-utils
+lynx
+-mouseconfig
%post
/usr/sbin/useradd user
=== suggested changes - untested -- CUT HERE ===
> Akos
Akos Redey
Akos
beer_monster
>
> Forget about the 486 you just run into too much hassle on older machines,
Try http://www.rdc-shop.co.uk/shops/main.php
No idea what these guys are like but they normally have reasonable cheap machnes. But if all your're doing is using it
as NAT/Firewall a 486+slackware should be OK.
--
*** NOTE ** nobody = Balbir.Sanghera
Greg Hennessy
<firstname...@amsjv.com> wrote:
>Agreed. Although I think a Pentium class base unit is the minimum,
>something like 200Mhz can be bought second for about £50 from ebay.
>Which should be fine to install and run most W95 equivalents.
Pentium 166-200s go for 25-30 notes @ the fairs around here.
P2-266-350s for around twice that.
greg
--
$ReplyAddress =~ s#\@.*$##; # Delete everything after the '@'
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Alley Gator. She'll make you 'fraid 'em
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AWM
"Greg Hennessy" <spamc...@example.com> wrote in message
news:b1ffivsbmkmlecnig...@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 09:45:08 +0100, Rob W. Norris
> <firstname...@amsjv.com> wrote:
>
> >Agreed. Although I think a Pentium class base unit is the minimum,
> >something like 200Mhz can be bought second for about £50 from ebay.
> >Which should be fine to install and run most W95 equivalents.
>
> Pentium 166-200s go for 25-30 notes @ the fairs around here.
>
> P2-266-350s for around twice that.
> greg
I don't why but there was a step improvement in performance when Intel and
AMD machines went through the 200 mghz barrier a P166 is a lot slower
than a P200 much more so than the clock speed would indicate. AMD K6s are a
better bet than a slot 1 P2/P3 as I have seen more than a couple of old
P2/P3s recently with spontanous reboot problems, not quite sure if it down
to the motherboard or processor as the surest, easiest and cheapest way to
fix them is to change both. IBM/Cyrix processors are best avoided.
A few old stock new super socket 7 and Slot 1 motherboards are comming on
to the market as ones held by manufacturers as RMA spares are sold off by
dealers on E bay , 15 quid + p&p usually buys one and suitable 400mghz+
processors can also be bought for around £10. Most of these boards take
DIMMs and SIMMs so cheap memory is no problem.
Buyer beware however as some of the dealers in computer bits on eBay are
less than honest --- read all the feeback and lookout not only for bad feed
back where the dealer is a seller but dealers with a highish perecentages
of sales where no feedback is left.
Alex Butcher
> I don't why but there was a step improvement in performance when Intel
> and AMD machines went through the 200 mghz barrier a P166 is a lot
> slower than a P200 much more so than the clock speed would indicate.
It's probably not the CPU, but my guess is that the 200MHz+ machines
you've used were probably assembled using 7200RPM discs.
About the only other thing I could think of would be if you were testing
using games that made use of MMX/3D Now! IIRC, that was the only
significant architectural change. The next major change was that
introduced by the PPro - integrated L2 cache running at near core speed,
rather than FSB speed (i.e a maximum of 33MHz with Pentiums, and 66 or
100MHz with PPro/PIIs).
> AMD K6s are a better bet than a slot 1 P2/P3 as I have seen more than a
> couple of old P2/P3s recently with spontanous reboot problems, not
> quite sure if it down to the motherboard or processor as the surest,
> easiest and cheapest way to fix them is to change both.
My experience is completely the opposite of that; I've seen plenty of AMD
systems that haven't been stable, even new, whilst my PII-266/ASUS P2B
machine and all the Dell/Viglen machines I used from 1998-2001 are solid
as a rock. I expect the PII machines you've seen have been treated roughly
and the slot has gone all sloppy.
Greg Hennessy
<not...@nowhere.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>I don't why but there was a step improvement in performance when Intel and
>AMD machines went through the 200 mghz barrier a P166 is a lot slower
>than a P200 much more so than the clock speed would indicate.
As Alex says below. Two things would account for the speed up. 7200 RPM
disks and UDMA which worked. When I had a P166 as a desktop box, it was
paired with a scsi disk, so I nevered suffered from the woes of PIO that I
experienced on boxes elsewhere with the same processor.
> AMD K6s are a
>better bet than a slot 1 P2/P3 as I have seen more than a couple of old
>P2/P3s recently with spontanous reboot problems, not quite sure if it down
>to the motherboard or processor as the surest, easiest and cheapest way to
>fix them is to change both. IBM/Cyrix processors are best avoided.
Quite. I find though its a lot easier to get a cheap 'branded' slot one
system @ the fairs than it is to get a K6 . Best deal I've got in a long
time was a fully loaded slot1 P2-350 compaq SFF deskpro for a tenner. It
was supposed to be barebones case and board only, but obviously someone was
asleep on the stall that morning.
>
>A few old stock new super socket 7 and Slot 1 motherboards are comming on
>to the market as ones held by manufacturers as RMA spares are sold off by
>dealers on E bay , 15 quid + p&p usually buys one and suitable 400mghz+
>processors can also be bought for around £10. Most of these boards take
>DIMMs and SIMMs so cheap memory is no problem.
They were a nice processor for the time, I can remember weighing up the
pros and cons of Super Socket 7 in 98 before going slot-1. Cheap P2-300s
which easily overclocked to 450 made my mind up on that.
Greg Hennessy
<alex.butch...@assursys.co.uk> wrote:
>and the slot has gone all sloppy.
And doncha just h8 it when that happens LMAO.