Installing on a small machine
Memory
Installation on a machine with < 8 M of main memory requires some
special attention. Before discussing how to handle this problem,
be sure you understand the nature of the problem. See Swap
Space .
The process which does the installation requires approximately
8M of memory. If you are installing on a machine with 4M of memory,
you MUST set up swap space for the installation process to use.
Hold it right there and be sure you understood. Sure, linux installation
will help you build and make available the swap space for your linux system,
but what about the installation process itself! While the installation
process is setting up swap space for future use, the installation process
needs it OWN swap space to work.
In order to make the swap space avaiable for installation, be sure
you do the following before running setup:
-
create a partition on one of your hard drives using fdisk
-
set the partition type to linux swap
-
create the swap area (similar to formatting) using mkswap
-
turn on access to the swap area using swapon
Once you have completed these steps, your swap space is active and available
for the installation process to use.
How do you know if you need to do this?
The need for more memory manifests itself in many different ways.
Basically, programs just don't work. The OS doesn't necessarily
jump up and yell: INSUFFICIENT MEMORY, although it sometimes does depending
on the software. One of the symptoms you might see during installation
is that you will have it all ready to install the disk sets after you have
selected what you want to, and the screen just flips back to the menu without
actually installing anything. General rule of thumb:
-
less than 8M -> set up the swap space before install,
-
more than 8M -> don't bother
Disk Space
The amount of disk space needed varies a great deal according to what
you select to have installed. Slackware (older versions) seems to
minimize the initial (default) install and let you decide how you want
to supplement. With the minimal disk sets (basic and networking),
you can do a simple router in les than 40M. Actually, the installatin
and an 8M swap area can fit in 40M. Red Hat with the basic install,
containing a great deal more functionality, minimal installation requires
about 250M.
The bottom line is that it depends on how much you are interested in
customizing the installation. Smaller disks (40M-100M) will not allow
for compilers, X, and a lot of the other anticipated features, but it will
provide a functional router.
RUNNING (not installing) on a Small Machine
Saving Memory
If you have trouble executing linux on a machine with a small amount of
memory, it will appear to swap itself to death and sometimes hang. Check
out this Mini-HowTO for some advice.