Dreaming of a lean installation method [was Re: *nix on"classic"systems]

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: Dreaming of a lean installation method [was Re: *nix on"classic"systems]
>   From: Sean Conner <spc at conman.org>
>   Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:26:58 -0400
>     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>It was thus said that the Great Angel Martin Alganza once stated:
>> 
>> Here it's when it (finally) comes my idea...  I've been trying to get
>> some modern Unix variant on my 486 notebook (no CD, PCMCIA NIC) for
>> quite some time now hithout enough (to my likings) success.  It's got
>> 16MB RAM, but, for some reason, it recognises only 12.  And, of course,
>> 12MB is not enough to run any modern installer.  I've ended up running a
>> Linux distribution called Small Linux on it, but again, it's an old,
>> poorly maintained distribution running an old Linux kernel.

My first stab at a server was using a 486DX/66 with 16mb though it did have a 
NIC.  the distro I used was slackware V2 something.  It fit in 120mb with 
space to spare and ran decently.  

I also had it on a 486slc/25 with 8mb but a 360mb disk with only the usual 
difficulties (less than steller installers back then).

What made the task resonable for both was CDrom drive.  I did it once with
floppies (75 of them!!!) and that was painful.  

Since I stopped messing with linux at caldara OpenlinuxV2.3 version level 
I can't say what the latest distros are like but those older ones fit an 
amazingly small machines if you took the custom path and didn't install 
more than the needed packages. I got tired of all the versions and the ever 
expanding size of the system required to just (barely) run it.


Allison

>
>  You could do what I did to install Linux on a 4MB RAM 120M harddrive
>laptop computer---find a Linux distro that will boot (I used Tom's Root Boot
>disk and even then it barely ran).  The steps I ran through went something
>like this:
>
>	On the target computer, I could run a shell, fdisk, mkfs  and dd. 
>	That was enough to get started.
>
>	Run fdisk.  On the machine I was working on, two partitions: 112M
>	and 8M.  Format the 8M as a filesystem and mount it.
>
>	On a full Linux system, get some needed tools like tar, dd to a
>	floppy.  Move to target system, and dd tar off to 8M partition.  So
>	likewise with some other tools.
>
>	On full system, I created a 112M file, and mounted it.  Formatted
>	it, and put kernel, init, and a small /bin.  unmount it.  tar
>	the file and dd to floppy.
>
>	On target tar xzcf /dev/fd0 | dd of=/dev/hda1
>
>	reboot target.  Once rebooted, reformat 8M for swap and enable it.
>
>	Keep using the floppy to get stuff over.
>
>  Took a few hours, but I got it done.
>
>  -spc (Wasn't the hardest install I did though ... )