Hi all, I just set up Linux on a very low-end machine using Slackware as my base distro. I found a couple of HOWTOs concerning 4MB machines (the machine I installed on was a 8MB Ti 486DLC), as well as low-end laptops. Here is what I did to install on such (really measly) hardware.
I have a question though: has anyone heard of a very old low-end chipset named MXC? Apparently from a company named Macronix? I've gotten XFree86 4.2.0 to run only in VGA mode under the chipset, even if it claims to be an SVGA chip. And no, I can't upgrade this-- and yes, I am perfectly happy to have the box with a CLUE (hehehehe :). Hopefully someone has heard of the chip and can give me pointers on getting more bang from it. (Right... wishful thinking). Preconditions: I had another machine where I set up some of the stuff. The target machine did not have a CD-ROM drive; however, I borrowed the CD-ROM drive off the more powerful box and used it for the install. You must either have disk sets or a CD-ROM drive for this to work. 1) Make boot disk The system did not have a usable OS installed. Booting from the CD was not an option; the BIOS was ancient and did not support such. So, I grabbed myself a copy of tomsrtbt and used it to start the system. Once booted up, I mounted the CD, ran Slackware's makebootdisk script (on the CD in /kernels) with the lowmem.i kernel. Since tomsrtbt uses an older 2.x series kernel (2.0 IIRC), there were some problems copying the disk image, and I manually dd'd the result image in /tmp to the disk (i.e., 'dd if=/tmp/lowmem.i of=/dev/fd0') 2) Don't reboot yet! Copy the Slackware initrd image Once I had a usable boot disk, I started partitioning the hard disk. I set aside the first partition as swap space, the second partition as my /home (and as a temporary root image, see later), and the third partition as everything else. I first tested the initrd image by doing 'mount -o loop initrd /mnt' and found that it wouldn't mount; belatedly discovered that it was compressed, and uncompressed it in /tmp before mount-- that worked. Ok. I then 'dd if=/tmp/initrd of=/dev/hda2'. Reboot, insert boot disk from step 1. 3) Boot up with boot disk Booted up with the boot disk. When asked for kernel params, I followed the example given by the LILO prompt message: booted via 'ramdisk root=/dev/hda2'. Once booted, everything is as a CD-ROM bootup. 4) Install Installation (see packages below) follows. When asked about partitions DO NOT WIPE OUT /dev/hda2 OR MOUNT IT AS /home YET. Do that later, after everything is installed. 5) Reboot Boot up the newly installed Linux. Login as root (note that the lowmem.i doesn't support networking (kaya nga lowmem, diba?)). Edit /etc/fstab to include /home. Mount. 6) Kernel compile? If you have a more powerful box, compile a custom kernel for the low-end box. Currently, I have the 486 box running on 2.4.20-ck2, no kernel modules, a minimal amount of packages, and Emacs. Yes, Emacs. If anyone can give me tips on making Emacs run better on lousy hardware, I'd be much obliged, thank you. :) I might even buy you a cup of coffee or two. ;) (PS: The machine was a Win95/Office box in my dad's office in its past life. Heck, I can't believe they put up with it. *8 MB of RAM*?) -- JM Ibanez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> University of Asia and the Pacific -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
