----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alexander E. Patrakov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "LFS Developers Mailinglist" <lfs-dev@linuxfromscratch.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 9:00 AM
Subject: LFS size and hardware requirements


> Hello,
>
> Some newbies get caught by our advertisement (which might be true for
older
> versions of LFS, but is untested as of LFS-6.3):
>
> > It is not difficult to build an LFS system of less than 100 megabytes
(MB),
> > which is substantially smaller than the majority of existing
installations.
> > Does this still sound like a lot of space? A few of us have been working
on
> > creating a very small embedded LFS system. We successfully built a
system
> > that was specialized to run the Apache web server with approximately 8MB
of
> > disk space used. Further stripping could bring this down to 5 MB or
less. Try
> > that with a regular distribution! This is only one of the many benefits
of
> > designing your own Linux implementation.
>
> ...and attempt to build LFS on their slow 586-class computers with only 16
MB of
> RAM. This is obviously a waste of time, both for them and for us.
Additionally,
> the mentioned 100 MB system obviously contains significant deviations from
the
> book and thus cannot be counted as LFS.
>
I agree for "586-class computers with only 16 MB" would give bad result if
any.
I have build IPCop in the past on a 586-class laptop with 160 MB memory in
approximatly three days.
Space on installation depend on what and how you install.
IPCop version based on LFS-6.3 should install on a 256 flash disk.

> P.S. I accept the challenge to "try that with a regular distribution".
>
> Proposal:
>
> 1) Remove this advertisement.
>
> 2) List hardware requirements (CPU, RAM, hard disk space) on the same page
as
> software host requirements, or immediately before it. These requirements
should
> be set so that the total build time (including all testsuites) is less
than 8
> hours, and that the build process never needs to get into swap (the worst
case
> seems to be Chapter 5 gcc Pass1 when starting from a host that is based on
gcc-3.3).
>
Hard disk space is a mandatory requirement.
Disk requirement on IPCop is 2 GB free space before building.
Indicative minimal memory could be somewhere between 128 MB.
Recommended memory to build should more than 256 MB
I have mesured IPCop 1.4 (is with gcc-3.3) building time on the same machine
with 128 MB and 512 MB. 128 MB require 3 time more to build than with 512 MB
memory.

Time should not be a requirement but a guide line.
Just say it take x time with this cpu, memory and disk.

We all know the problem with heavy swap usage but it may happen a small part
goes permanently in swap without a big slowdown. This happen to me on alpha
(160 MB memory).
Until that part remain permantly in swap, this is not a problem.

Gilles

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