Re: Memory requirements between releases

2005-08-15 Thread Chris

Chris wrote:
Thanks for all replies and suggestions. sounds like I can give 6 a try. 
I can move the hd to a bigger machine for installing and compiling.




...except that pcic and card have been removed from -current :( so it's 
back to 5.4R


chris
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Re: Memory requirements between releases

2005-08-14 Thread Chris
Thanks for all replies and suggestions. sounds like I can give 6 a try. 
I can move the hd to a bigger machine for installing and compiling.


Chris
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Re: Memory requirements between releases

2005-08-13 Thread Peter Jeremy
On Fri, 2005-Aug-12 21:38:43 +0100, Chris wrote:
The installation notes for 4.11 say, referring to i386 platform
 ...after installation, FreeBSD itself can be run in 4-8MB of RAM with 
a pared-down kernel

The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say
FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM.

Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something 
different being measured?

As Kris said, you are measuring two different things.  Note the phrase
after installation in your first quote.  Installation takes
substantially more memory because FreeBSD needs to load a full-sized
GENERIC kernel, allocate space for a RAM disk to hold the installation
filesystem process and have enough RAM left over to actually run the
installaton processes.  Once you've installed FreeBSD, you can prune
down the kernel and you don't need the RAM disk.

That said, 5.x is larger than 4.x (which is larger than 3.x, etc).

I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a 
wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. Can I reduce 
the amount of memory required? I have compiled a reduced kernel but it 
swaps like mad when compiling.  Kismet and deps took over 12 hours. Just 
after boot and not doing anything it has about 2mb free and 17 processes 
running.

24MB should be adequate as a SOHO wireless router/NAT box but doing
compilations will stress it significantly (as you've noticed).  It
would be too small if you were going to run lots of applications
(named, squid etc)

2MB free sounds about right.  The Unix kernel sees free space as
wasted space and tries to avoid having too much of it.  You can add
inactive to the free memory to get a better idea of how much RAM
isn't being used, and the cache will shrink if processes need for RAM.
As long as your system isn't paging during normal operation (normal
operation for a firewall excludes compiling ports or the kernel),
then you have enough RAM.

17 processes sounds a bit high.  You can probably find some that aren't
necessary - in particular, you probably only want one or two gettys.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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Re: Memory requirements between releases

2005-08-13 Thread Michael Nottebrock
On Saturday, 13. August 2005 10:32, Peter Jeremy wrote:

 24MB should be adequate as a SOHO wireless router/NAT box but doing
 compilations will stress it significantly (as you've noticed).

Probably stating the obvious here, but that's where those fine binary packages 
FreeBSD builds from ports are really convenient. :)

-- 
   ,_,   | Michael Nottebrock   | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve | http://www.freebsd.org
   \u/   | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org


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Re: Memory requirements between releases

2005-08-13 Thread M. Warner Losh
In message: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chris [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
: The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say
: FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM.
: 
: Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something 
: different being measured?

Not really, if you know what you are doing.

: I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a 
: wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. Can I reduce 
: the amount of memory required? I have compiled a reduced kernel but it 
: swaps like mad when compiling.  Kismet and deps took over 12 hours. Just 
: after boot and not doing anything it has about 2mb free and 17 processes 
: running.

You can deploy to one of these laptops, but chances are good that the
extra memory required for large compiles (anything bigger than hello
world) will swap its little brains out.

You can trim the kernel down a lot for the 100CT.  You can eliminate
all the SCSI stuff, all the raid stuff, most of the pci stuff, all the
old crusty ISA ethernet hardware.  You can trim down usb quite a bit,
eliminate eisa.  That helps a lot.  I can boot on my 16MB laptop, but
it is a little painful to do much on.  On that I can elimiante usb and
pci since there's no pci bus at all.  Oh, and firewire too!

Warner
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Re: Memory requirements between releases

2005-08-12 Thread Chris

Chris wrote:


Hi

The installation notes for 4.11 say, referring to i386 platform
 ...after installation, FreeBSD itself can be run in 4-8MB of RAM 
with a pared-down kernel


The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say
FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM.

Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something 
different being measured?


I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a 
wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. Can I reduce 
the amount of memory required? I have compiled a reduced kernel but it 
swaps like mad when compiling.  Kismet and deps took over 12 hours. 
Just after boot and not doing anything it has about 2mb free and 17 
processes running.


Thanks for any suggestions

Chris



Sorry should have said:
tosh# uname -a
FreeBSD tosh.13dog.org 5.4-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE #0: Fri Jun  3 
12:51:33 BST 2005 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/OLDCARD.TOSH  i386



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Re: Memory requirements between releases

2005-08-12 Thread Arno J. Klaassen
hello,

 The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say
 FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM.
 [ .. ] 
 I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a
 wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. 

I've run 5.X for about a year on a Pentium60 with 16M as ethernet
router/NAT; flawless, excellent perf (untill it died a couple of
weeks ago).

net-booting via PXE though, no idea whether you can *install* with
less than 24M, running only seems OK

Arno

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Re: Memory requirements between releases

2005-08-12 Thread Kris Kennaway
On Fri, Aug 12, 2005 at 09:38:43PM +0100, Chris wrote:
 Hi
 
 The installation notes for 4.11 say, referring to i386 platform
  ...after installation, FreeBSD itself can be run in 4-8MB of RAM with 
 a pared-down kernel
 
 The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say
 FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM.
 
 Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something 
 different being measured?

The quoted text is comparing *installation* requirements (24 on 5.4)
with minimum memory needed to run a pared-down kernel *after
installation* (4-8MB on 4.11).  Apples and oranges.

Kris


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