On Wednesday 03 October 2007 11:50:40 Douglas A. Tutty wrote: > Hello all, > > I have a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram. I bought an 8 GB drive to put in my > P-II and it won't boot it so I've put in in the 486 along with a 1 GB > drive. > > I'm on dialup and would like to avoid a bad partitioning decision > requring a whole new install/download cycle (I'm on slow dialup). > > The purpose of the box is to try out the mechanics of using OpenBSD for > a desktop. Obviously, the 486 will be slow at running (or unable to run > some) desktop apps but I'll learn the mechanics of following patch > branch and get totally comfortable with the system. I'll also be able > to learn pf (I'm used to Shorewall on Debian). > > The box has two drives, both Western Digital. One is 8.1 GB, the other > is 1.1. I'll be installing 4.1 release then installing the patches and > following their instructions re rebuilding. > > Here's what I'm thinking: > > wd0 (1.1 GB drive): > a 100 MB / > b 128 MB swap > c 1.1 GB > d 256 MB /tmp > e ~640 MB /var > > wd1 (8.1 GB drive): > a 100 MB spare / > b 128 MB swap > c 8.1 GB > d 1.0 GB /home > e ~6.9 GB /usr > > Do you think that this will give me all the room I need to install and > keep patched: > > full install > icewm or Xfce > Konqueror > Firefox > a pdf reader or two (Evince, Kpdf, Xpdf) > mplayer > mc > mutt > vim > > Yes, I know that compiles will take forever and a day, but hopefully I > won't be recompiling much; I need the space in case its required. > > Are these partitions a good size in the right order or are they any > suggestions for improvement? > > Thanks, > > Doug.
Running graphical stuff on a 32M 486 is going to test your patience. If you can survive this without defenistrating your system, you are an amazing person. Given that you are testing things, in this case I think I'd just create a swap of 512M or so, and just create an 'a' partition thats the rest of the disk. The downside here is that if you run the potential risk of losing everything if 'a' goes, but I'd be more worried about the lack of disk overall. As an example, you can't hold all the packages you could compile, etc. But if you really want to partition, make the faster drive wd0 and make one swap partition. Don't create a spare--you don't have spare space--use it for /home or /usr. Don't forget that your 1G drive is elderly, so keeping the least important stuff there is a good idea. I don't know where you are, but getting ANY Pentium would be a huge win. I just found some 233MHz Dells with 128/256M ram and 10G disks, which went for $33 each. Given what you have at the moment, a 200-500MHz class machine would be ever so much faster. Ask around and you might be able to get several for free. The experience of a 486 with graphical stuff is likely to be stunning. --STeve Andre'
