Hi,
A couple of people here (including myself) are trying to set up a
router (IP forwarder really) based on Debian. We have an old 486 (it's a Cyrix
486-40) with 4 MB of RAM for the router. According to what I have found on the
web, this should do the work.
We have installed Debian using the lowmem procedure (kudos to the developers,
very very cleaver!) and it works. I replaced the kernel with a custom version
that has EVERYTHING stripped (I mean it... this thing has the necessary network
functions, netcard, IDE, ELF and nothing else) and uses as little memory as
possible. I started stripping other things too, for example, there aren't
virtual terminals, the only way to get in is via telnet or rescue floppy.
setserial is gone, and I was thinking of disablig the syslog daemon, too.
The problem I have right now (and this showed up long before I started tweaking
the computer) is that the machine reboots randomly. For example, I was using ae
to edit /etc/init.d/network to add a second interface, and the machine
rebooted. I was looking for /etc/modules to remove the modules for the ethernet
card and the machine rebooted. Sometimes the machine boots, stays there for a
while minding its own bussiness and it suddenly reboots. Sometimes it sits
there for a little longer. In fact, I used dselect to fetch some upgraded
packages via ftp, and it completed successfully (even installed perl... which I
didn't want, WTH!)
While I was recompiling the kernel I read something about no-hlt, but I haven't
tried it yet. Also, I read about no-387 but I guess this disables FPU (which I
didn't know was requiered) emulation. I'm recompiling the kernel optimized for
a 386 not a 486, and I stripped the floppy (physically and from the kernel).
Pointers are sincerely welcomed...
Marcelo
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