Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:51:57 -0500 From: Matt Penna <mdp1261@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: Eugene Grosbein <eugen@www.kuzbass.ru>, "Brian T.Schellenberger" <bts@babbleon.org>, Gregory Bond <gnb@itga.com.au>, Steve Wills <steve@stevenwills.com>, Michael Sierchio <kudzu@tenebras.com>, Wilko Bulte <wkb@freebie.xs4all.nl>, John Utz <john@utzweb.net>, "David W. Chapman Jr." <dwcjr@inethouston.net> Subject: Re: FreeBSD Memory Requirements Legacy and Present Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20020118130619.01d954f0@vmspop.isc.rit.edu> In-Reply-To: <3C47AE08.24F97802@www.kuzbass.ru> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20020117210634.01d8eec0@vmspop.isc.rit.edu>
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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
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