Ward William E PHDN wrote:
> Ok, I'm starting to get a bit down on this... last week, someone asked if
> you can
> install RH6.2 on a 486, and I confidently piped up "Sure!" Now, I'm not so
> sure
> that if can be done as easily as I thought.
>
> Ok, here's the deal... I bought a 486 cheap a couple of weeks back to use as
> a
> firewall/printserver (and maybe a SAMBA server, too). It's not critical
> that I
> have it running YET... Cable modems are coming in the spring (when this
> machine
> is needed), not this fall. But I'd still like to have it running.
>
> The machine was a 486 DX2-50 with built in 1 MB VLB video, a 3COM Ether
> Express III, 16 MB of RAM, a mouse, keyboard, SVGA monitor, floppy, and
> a Quantum 304 MB IDE HD. I had a few spare parts that I'm not using,
> so I slapped in a better Video (a 2 MB VLB #9 GXE 364 Video) and a
> WD 1.6 GB EIDE HD. I also attempted to slip in 32 MB of RAM that I
> had, but was stymied when I found that the machine was a true-blue IBM
> ValuePoint, with proprietary memory constraints.... this is one of
> my two big problems, I think.
>
> You'll notice that I have no CDROM for this computer; the intention was to
> do a network install using the CDROM mounted NFS from my K6/2-500. I've
> successfully done those kinds of installs before, but only when I've
> had time to troubleshoot the NFS mount... I created the bootnet floppy,
> stuck it in the machine, and powered up (well, I'd previously figured
> out the config.. I'm shortening the tale here). The install went perfectly
> through the NFS mount, which didn't work... oh well. I'll figure that
> out later, when I have two machines to work with. I mounted the CD
> therefore in the FTP area, turned on anonymous FTP, and retried an FTP
> install... much better! The second stage loaded, I formatted the two
> HDs (with hda1 being ~50MB as /boot, hda2 being / with the rest of the
> drive, hdb1 being 128 MB as swap, and hdb2 being /tmp for the rest of the
> drive... wasn't big enough for /var, IMO) No errors were detected in the
> drives, the NIC works perfectly, I'm getting good stuff. I chose a
> Custom install, selected what I wanted, and kicked back for a 3 hour
> or so (the machine >is< slow) install.... and waited. And waited.
> And waited. After thrashing for about 3 hours without getting ANY of
> the RPMs installed, I tried to figure out what was wrong. Does anyone
> know the minimum memory size practical for a network install? Is
> part of my problem that I put /tmp and swap on the slow, small Quantum?
> Is there any way to tweak something to get a decent (even overnight!)
> install going?
>
> I'm loathe to do what I think is going to be the suggestion, but I'll
> do it as a last resort; pull the drives, stick them in my machine, and
> do the install there. I'd rather not have to do that, as it's such
> a huge difference in architecture, plus I don't want to have my
> machine down while doing this.
>
> Any clues to help, folks? I've even tried RH5.2, RH6.0 and Mandrake 7.0.
> Of those, RH5.2 Seg faults during initial install, Mandrake and 6.0 hang,
> though I've yet to figure out WHY. 6.2 seems so close.... and yet so
> far, when the machine just thrashes.
>
> Bill Ward
>
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Hi Bill:
I have a 486DX50 VLB running RH 6.2. Previously, before settling on RH, I had
installed about 80% of all the different versions of Linux. Each one had it's
own reason for causing problems but I eventually got each one to install so I
could check it out to see if "it's the one for me."
During the time I did these installs I had many occasions to have problems that
sounds like your problem. However, each one required a different solution
because the version required different things. Needless to say, I learned a
great deal from the experience. I even have RH 6.2 running on a 386 currently.
Now, to your problem.
First, I believe there is a conflict in your box. I have found that for an
install of any version to start and proceed to any length, the hardware must be
acceptable and basically correct for the version being installed. Since yours
has started and succeeded to a point, I would try to discover what it was trying
to do and why it failed. I would suspect an addressing conflict but I'm not
there watching the progress. Also, part of the conflict could be due to the
"true-blue IBM" architecture, since it would be somewhat proprietary.
Second, the memory you have is sufficient but slow. I've read that graphical
installs need a minimum of 16 meg, text installs need 8 meg and some brave souls
have successfully painfully installed using only four meg. However, as suggested
before, test it.
Third, the FTP install may be compounding the problem. I've found that RH has
the most difficult FTP install of all the versions. IMHO, I would suggest
resolving the network problem and install directly from the network CD. Are you
using the network install kernel? Have you double checked your bios HD settings?
Some installs prefer LBA turned off, for example. Another possibility would be
to remove the small HD, set the large HD as hda, install a CD drive as hdb and
install everything to hda, remove the CD and reinstall the small HD and then
split it up the way you want.
Fourth, I've found that swaps don't need to be as large as some people
recommend. I have successfully installed several versions, including RH, with
only 10 meg of swap. Yes, there was some HD grinding but it still installed and
ran. My point here is that swap usage is based on physical ram size and beyond a
geometrical ratio size, additional swap is just wasted disk space. The magic
ratio seems to be ~1.5 times physical ram. Since you have 16 meg of ram I would
suggest a swap of 20 - 50 meg. My original install of RH 6.2 still runs great
with 20 meg swap even in Xwindows surfing the net with Netscape. I mention this
because you would have a nice size working RH install if you had a swap
partition of 20 - 50 meg and the rest of the drive partitioned for the OS.
I hope this helps.
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