Hi Chris,
Chris Bee wrote:
On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 06:40:28PM +0000, Miod Vallat wrote:
The obvious thing you should do is to add more memory to this system.
The 5.4 i386 GENERIC kernel is huge and eats more than half the physical
memory, and then the data structures it creates aren't free. There is
basically no free memory for userland to run, and your system is
swap-bound, hence horribly slow, as you have noticed.
Your available options are:
- run an old release, which fits in 16MB. I doubt anything >= 4.5 will
fit in 16MB, so you'd use a 5+ years old, unsupported, release.
- build a stripped-down kernel on another 5.4 system and run it on your
ThinkPad. This ought to work, but your kernel will not be supported,
so if it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.
- add more memory to your system. Really. It will help. Can't you see
your laptop looking at you with puppy dog eyes?
- get a beefier laptop. Anything with more memory will do.
Miod
I have installed 4.0 and while it does work, even such an old release is
barely usable. I'm not too keen on the idea of using such unsupported,
possibly unstable software on my laptop, anyway. I suppose the only
option is to buy a newer laptop, like you said. There are plenty of good
suggestions floating around, most of which can be had for tens of
dollars on eBay. OpenBSD is getting so bloated these days, it requires
so much RAM.... :)
Right :) well, it is for fun of course. I too am playing with NetBSD on
a ThinkPad 600E and OpenBSD on an Omnibook 800.
You have a fine machine, why let it get dust? those old boxen have
sometimes a charme newer don't have, a solid feel and for example older
ThinkPads a marvellous keyboard. I use mine to hack a bit and to
telnet/ssh around..
I would not recommend using an old release! However both NetBSD and
OpenBSD became fat! I don't think it is only the kernel, it looks as if
every single program got a bit fatter in the years, even plain old stuff
like bash or xterm.
To install you have the option to put the hard-disk in a more beefed up
system, install on it and then put it back. Running will be less hungry
than installing perhaps.
Try to find more RAM, you should have slots... 32MB will be already a
bit better and with 64 you start to have something useful. Memory
upgrade sites tend to agree that 64MB is possible for you.
My OmniBook has 32MB with OpenBSD 5.4 "generic" is usable command-line,
however while starting Xorg now works, it is unusable, totally swap-bound.
My TP 600E which has more RAM (160 IIRC) and runs NetBSD is instead
usable! I can compile, edit, send mail, run GNUstep.. everything excepti
running firefox of course.
However, I optimized the NetBSD kernel by installing only drivers and
hardware I need (I removed all unused busses, cards I won't use,
file-systems, etc). I reduced the kernel size by 33%, I did not check
the actual memory footprint, but it helped.
I bet you can do the same with OpenBSD, but keep your old kernel as a
back-up during these experiments!
The other thing that really got fatter is gcc, so... if you have another
machine with more RAM, do your compiles there :)
Riccardo
