Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 11:35:49PM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Then there's aesthetics. I learn best by understanding. Since UNIX culture was born on slow (by today's standards) machines, why not learn in that mode to start? What steps would I skip if my machine is too slow if I'm dedicated to learning on it and not trying to cut corners to make it run faster? OpenBSD runs just fine on slower hardware; be prepared to take a while for certain things, and use the provided binary stuff instead of compiling your own whenever possible. Joachim
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 12:44:46PM -0400, Nick Holland wrote: Shawn K. Quinn wrote: On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 10:49 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 06:56:32AM -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 22:37 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. 32M is at a point where if it isn't enough, you need a better machine. Tweaking the kernel to make it run better in 32M is just perfume on the pig. If that's what you need to do, get a less smelly pig. As I indicated recently, probably on this thread, ssh on a 486 is painful. Works fine, but painfully slow. X? oh, ick. It will work, but you may need the XF3 support, as a lot of old, 486-vintage video chips haven't been ported to X.org. If you need to use the XF3 servers, you will be out of luck starting with OpenBSD v4.2, as (hopefully) we will have switched to Xenocara, and probably drop XF3 support. I believe at some point, it was indicated that this 486 is or may be the OP's first OpenBSD experience. If that is true, I'd highly recommend a better machine to get your feet wet with. MY recommendation for minimum HW for OpenBSD for a first-timer would be a Pentium, 100MHz or better, 32M RAM or better. If you want X, I'd bump that up to a P200, 64M RAM or better. Again, it isn't that it won't run on slower machines, it is just that you will skip important steps in the learning process if your machine is too slow. Right now, I only have two boxes: my 486 and my Athlon. The Athlon runs Debian Etch amd64. Its the box that does all my work so I don't want to get on a BSD learning curve on it. The 486 is only a convenience piece. Yes, X is a problem no matter Debian or BSD. Right now, the 486 has Debian Sarge on it but I've tweaked the XFree86 configs so it uses the previous versions S3 driver since its not available for the current version. That wont be an option in Debian Etch eiter. Bottom line, I may have to give up on X. Its not that great a loss. Debian's Sarge installer doesn't work on it and neither will Etch's. If ever I need to reinstall or change something fundamental (e.g. the hard drive crashes), I have to install woody base and upgrade. The trouble is that its a pain to do that over dial-up. This is one of my reasons for looking at OpenBSD. So I want to learn BSD on the 486. As for taking a long time to install, everything is relative. It takes a long time to upgrade Debian over dial-up too. I _think_ I can download the tarballs from the ftp site, burn them onto a CD so I have a local repository to point the install at, then I _think_ the time-consuming thing is something about generating keys. Assuming that it can do that without me sitting there, I can get it started then go camping :) Besides, I'm a bit attached to my trusty 486. It has never given me a moments trouble (hardware wise) since I bought it new from IBM in 1993/4. My P-100 is so unreliable its unusable except as a terminal emulator. My PII was given to me full of cat hair; not one fan turned. It dies after 45 seconds. The 486 runs quiet, cool, and error free. My only concern is that I upgraded the memory from 8 MB to 16 then 32 and in the process of SIMM swapping, I don't have IBM ECC memory anymore. Rather than compare it to a smelly pig, try an old uncle. I want to get BSD on it before it gets Alzheimer's (memory loss) or Parkinson's (as in Parkinson's Law about available space). Then there's aesthetics. I learn best by understanding. Since UNIX culture was born on slow (by today's standards) machines, why not learn in that mode to start? What steps would I skip if my machine is too slow if I'm dedicated to learning on it and not trying to cut corners to make it run faster? Once I have a working OpenBSD system and learn about it, I can decide if I want to make the switch on my Athlon. Thanks for your comments. Doug.
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 10:49 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 06:56:32AM -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 22:37 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Assuming you don't try to do more with it than you have CPU and RAM for, you should be fine. However, once you've tested that all your hardware works with the GENERIC kernel, I would strongly recommend you compile a custom kernel and run that (do a Web search for a Perl program called dmassage which will help immensely), but keep a copy of GENERIC around in case problems do creep in. The reason for compiling a custom kernel in this case is to save memory; I saved about 2.5M on a similar system, which is a lot when you only have 32M to begin with (with any system much newer it's usually not worth it). I thought compiling a custom kernel was _discouraged_? Officially it's discouraged; from my point of view, you have one of the rare situations where a case could be made for it. Note that you should *always* keep a copy of GENERIC around for troubleshooting. I just loaded the 486 to the most I ever do: ssh to the big box (titan) to pon courer (the modem) and run bwm ssh to titan for mutt run aptitude, update the package list run top to watch everything run X with icewm: rxvt ssh titan, to run conquorer go to theweathernetwork.com I'm using 6 MB swap, but the system is not spending any time waiting for I/O. Aptitude is taking 75% of the CPU, top on a 2 second delay is taking 10%. I can still browse the net; the wait is a slow dial-up connection. I don't know how to tell how big the kernel in memory is since its modular. Linux, the kernel, as distributed in Debian GNU/Linux, the full oeprating system, is modular. The OpenBSD kernel is not, it's monolithic. An apples-to-apples comparison would be a Linux kernel configured with no module support and most possible device drivers compiled into the kernel directly (and, IMHO, that falls squarely into the category of kids, don't try this at home for a box with only 32M of RAM). -- Shawn K. Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
Shawn K. Quinn wrote: On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 10:49 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 06:56:32AM -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 22:37 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Assuming you don't try to do more with it than you have CPU and RAM for, you should be fine. However, once you've tested that all your hardware works with the GENERIC kernel, I would strongly recommend you compile a custom kernel and run that (do a Web search for a Perl program called dmassage which will help immensely), but keep a copy of GENERIC around in case problems do creep in. The reason for compiling a custom kernel in this case is to save memory; I saved about 2.5M on a similar system, which is a lot when you only have 32M to begin with (with any system much newer it's usually not worth it). I thought compiling a custom kernel was _discouraged_? Officially it's discouraged; from my point of view, you have one of the rare situations where a case could be made for it. no. If you want to run OpenBSD on a 16M or 12M machine, yes, you probably have to make a custom kernel. But then, you have a pretty far-out app, so you would know that already. 32M is at a point where if it isn't enough, you need a better machine. Tweaking the kernel to make it run better in 32M is just perfume on the pig. If that's what you need to do, get a less smelly pig. Note that you should *always* keep a copy of GENERIC around for troubleshooting. I just loaded the 486 to the most I ever do: ssh to the big box (titan) to pon courer (the modem) and run bwm ssh to titan for mutt run aptitude, update the package list run top to watch everything run X with icewm: rxvt ssh titan, to run conquorer go to theweathernetwork.com As I indicated recently, probably on this thread, ssh on a 486 is painful. Works fine, but painfully slow. (key length was cranked a few releases ago with the assumption that most people with slower machines can crank it back down if they so desire). X? oh, ick. It will work, but you may need the XF3 support, as a lot of old, 486-vintage video chips haven't been ported to X.org. If you need to use the XF3 servers, you will be out of luck starting with OpenBSD v4.2, as (hopefully) we will have switched to Xenocara, and probably drop XF3 support. I believe at some point, it was indicated that this 486 is or may be the OP's first OpenBSD experience. If that is true, I'd highly recommend a better machine to get your feet wet with. OpenBSD will run better on a 486 than just about any other popular OS now, but the 486 will take a long time to install, and you shouldn't make the assumption that your first install will actually be your final install. Installing on a 486 is for someone with enough experience that the first install ends up being the final install; you don't want to learn too many lessons the hard way on a 486. MY recommendation for minimum HW for OpenBSD for a first-timer would be a Pentium, 100MHz or better, 32M RAM or better. If you want X, I'd bump that up to a P200, 64M RAM or better. Again, it isn't that it won't run on slower machines, it is just that you will skip important steps in the learning process if your machine is too slow. Keep in mind, some wickedly fast (for OpenBSD) machines are probably sitting out at your neighbor's curb on trash day (my best find so far was a 733MHz PIII w/256M RAM and a 30G HD). I'm suspecting Vista upgrades are gonna be putting a lot of otherwise fine machines out on curbs soon. Nick.
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Sun, 2007-03-25 at 12:44 -0400, Nick Holland wrote: 32M is at a point where if it isn't enough, you need a better machine. Tweaking the kernel to make it run better in 32M is just perfume on the pig. If that's what you need to do, get a less smelly pig. Wow, I guess back in the day, I had one great smelling pig, then (at least my mom didn't complain that it stunk up the place). Replacing the box wasn't really an option at the time, and the 100 MHz Pentium with a mere 32M of RAM worked admirably right up until the hard disk finally gave up the ghost. (The same role is now filled by a 600 MHz Athlon with 128M of RAM, which of course is way overkill for a basic firewall/router with Squid, but the only box I have not otherwise occupied.) -- Shawn K. Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 22:37 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. [...] Debian Etch will need more than 32 MB ram so am starting the planning. I've compared Open-, Net-, and Free-BSD (via google search and reading the three web-sites) and like the security-by-default nature of Open- and its reputation for solid documentation. I'm used to the command line (hate GUI) and vi. Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? Assuming you don't try to do more with it than you have CPU and RAM for, you should be fine. However, once you've tested that all your hardware works with the GENERIC kernel, I would strongly recommend you compile a custom kernel and run that (do a Web search for a Perl program called dmassage which will help immensely), but keep a copy of GENERIC around in case problems do creep in. The reason for compiling a custom kernel in this case is to save memory; I saved about 2.5M on a similar system, which is a lot when you only have 32M to begin with (with any system much newer it's usually not worth it). -- Shawn K. Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
Shawn K. Quinn wrote: Assuming you don't try to do more with it than you have CPU and RAM for, you should be fine. However, once you've tested that all your hardware works with the GENERIC kernel, I would strongly recommend you compile a custom kernel and run that (do a Web search for a Perl program called dmassage which will help immensely), but keep a copy of GENERIC around in case problems do creep in. The reason for compiling a custom kernel in this case is to save memory; I saved about 2.5M on a similar system, which is a lot when you only have 32M to begin with (with any system much newer it's usually not worth it). If he's not using all 32mb (command-line, no X) then what's that gain?
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 06:56:32AM -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 22:37 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Assuming you don't try to do more with it than you have CPU and RAM for, you should be fine. However, once you've tested that all your hardware works with the GENERIC kernel, I would strongly recommend you compile a custom kernel and run that (do a Web search for a Perl program called dmassage which will help immensely), but keep a copy of GENERIC around in case problems do creep in. The reason for compiling a custom kernel in this case is to save memory; I saved about 2.5M on a similar system, which is a lot when you only have 32M to begin with (with any system much newer it's usually not worth it). I thought compiling a custom kernel was _discouraged_? I just loaded the 486 to the most I ever do: ssh to the big box (titan) to pon courer (the modem) and run bwm ssh to titan for mutt run aptitude, update the package list run top to watch everything run X with icewm: rxvt ssh titan, to run conquorer go to theweathernetwork.com I'm using 6 MB swap, but the system is not spending any time waiting for I/O. Aptitude is taking 75% of the CPU, top on a 2 second delay is taking 10%. I can still browse the net; the wait is a slow dial-up connection. I don't know how to tell how big the kernel in memory is since its modular. So I'll have to see how the generic kernel does. Doug.
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
* Douglas Allan Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-03-23 16:12]: I thought compiling a custom kernel was _discouraged_? so is giving bad advice on mailing lists. yet, people keep doing both. I see no reason not to use GENERIC on a 32MB system. -- Henning Brauer, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] BS Web Services, http://bsws.de Full-Service ISP - Secure Hosting, Mail and DNS Services Dedicated Servers, Rootservers, Application Hosting - Hamburg Amsterdam
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
In message http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-miscm=117452881511952w=1, Douglas Allan Tutty dtutty () porchlight ! ca asked I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Box has two uses: under normal cirumstance, as a thin client to my athlon box elsewhere in the house. As a toolbox incase anything goes wrong with my new athlon, I still can dial out to the net for help and downloads. [[...]] Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? OpenBSD would be fine for this -- I use a very similar system (1995-vintage 486DX4-75 laptop with 32MB memory) as a home firewall. It has 2 PCMCIA ISA-bus NICs, both ultra-cheap ne2000 clones (the latest one bought a couple of months ago for 3 Euros (around US$4) on Ebay). One NIC talks to the DSL, the other to my home network. The system has a new-in-2001 10GB disk, with loads of free space; you should have no problem fitting a full OpenBSD install into either one of your disks. My firewall's main limitation is the poor performance of the ultra-cheap ISA-bus NICs. Right now it's limited to around 150-200K bytes/second http/scp downloads even though my DSL will do 2-3 times that (checked by hooking faster systems directly to the DSL). I suspect that better NICs would help, but I'm moving in a few months so I haven't bothered. My only worry in the past has been how to install patches quickly, since rebuilding from source is a bit slow (I typed 'make build' 2 days ago, and it's still running...). I like Nick Holland's suggestion http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-miscm=117453369215436w=1 of running -current, and may try it on my firewall. ciao, -- -- Jonathan Thornburg (remove -animal to reply) [EMAIL PROTECTED] School of Mathematics, U of Southampton, England Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. -- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On 21 March 2007, Travers Buda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Douglas Allan Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-03-21 22:37:01]: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. *snip* Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? I've run OpenBSD on a 486DX2 with 20 megs of ram. When you're talking about the 486es, you're going to want a FPU with openbsd. [...] The DX series did have FPU. The SX didn't. Regards, Liviu Daia -- Dr. Liviu Daia http://www.imar.ro/~daia
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 10:16:24PM -0500, Travers Buda wrote: * Douglas Allan Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-03-21 22:37:01]: I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. *snip* Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? I've run OpenBSD on a 486DX2 with 20 megs of ram. When you're talking about the 486es, you're going to want a FPU with openbsd. It does not look like there is any emulation (however, I remember seeing something in the GENERIC config a year or so back...) or else it won't work. The system was fine, and quite responsive for just ssh, tip, etc. OpenBSD is a fine choice, the biggest bottleneck you're probably going to see is virtual memory-related stuff like the encrypted swap, which you can turn off via the vm.swapencrypt.enable sysctl. You're probably not going to be swapping too darn much unless you decide to use X, then it's going to be a bit over the line, however, this does not mean it's not going to work. =) 486DX4-100 has FPU. All I need is a basic X window manager (for moving windows around), an xterm, and ssh that port forwards X11. Right now, I have no problem sshing to my athlon in the basement and running Konqueror for web browsing when I need java and https. The only other memory and compute intensive thing I do is run debian's aptitude package manager. You mean OpenBSD has encrypted swap out-of-the-box? That's fantastic. It took a while to set up on my debian etch box. Thanks, Doug.
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On 3/22/07, Douglas Allan Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You mean OpenBSD has encrypted swap out-of-the-box? That's fantastic. It took a while to set up on my debian etch box. That is why we call it ``secure by default''
Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Box has two uses: under normal cirumstance, as a thin client to my athlon box elsewhere in the house. As a toolbox incase anything goes wrong with my new athlon, I still can dial out to the net for help and downloads. Debian Etch will need more than 32 MB ram so am starting the planning. I've compared Open-, Net-, and Free-BSD (via google search and reading the three web-sites) and like the security-by-default nature of Open- and its reputation for solid documentation. I'm used to the command line (hate GUI) and vi. Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? Thanks, Doug.
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On 3/21/07, Douglas Allan Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? I've heard rumours on the internets that sometimes it creeps out from under beds and eats children. I don't know if you can trust it... -Nick
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
* Douglas Allan Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-03-21 22:37:01]: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. *snip* Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? I've run OpenBSD on a 486DX2 with 20 megs of ram. When you're talking about the 486es, you're going to want a FPU with openbsd. It does not look like there is any emulation (however, I remember seeing something in the GENERIC config a year or so back...) or else it won't work. The system was fine, and quite responsive for just ssh, tip, etc. OpenBSD is a fine choice, the biggest bottleneck you're probably going to see is virtual memory-related stuff like the encrypted swap, which you can turn off via the vm.swapencrypt.enable sysctl. You're probably not going to be swapping too darn much unless you decide to use X, then it's going to be a bit over the line, however, this does not mean it's not going to work. =) -- Travers Buda
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Box has two uses: under normal cirumstance, as a thin client to my athlon box elsewhere in the house. As a toolbox incase anything goes wrong with my new athlon, I still can dial out to the net for help and downloads. Debian Etch will need more than 32 MB ram so am starting the planning. I've compared Open-, Net-, and Free-BSD (via google search and reading the three web-sites) and like the security-by-default nature of Open- and its reputation for solid documentation. I'm used to the command line (hate GUI) and vi. Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? Thanks, Doug. Don't know about best, but it should work as well as anything, and probably better than most. Install will take a while, ssh logins will be painful (ssh1 and/or reducing your key size will help a lot), Oh, and read up on SSH connection sharing (-M). It Rocks for slow machines! Make sure you get your ISA NIC set right, and you should be in fine shape... Both of those HDs are old and may not be long for the world, so pick one, and install on it, leave the other one alone, or as a backup, not as part of a production system. That will somewhat reduce the likelihood of a disk failure taking you down. Since you don't have the disk space, if you don't have a faster machine to build on, you might want to stick to running -current, so if a security problem shows up, just install the latest snapshot, you will be done before the -stable users get done asking if they really have to build everything, or if they can build just the parts that are impacted. Yes, there's a lot more adventure involved in that, but that's an unpleasantly small amount of machine to build on... Hm. time to test build on a 486 again...haven't done that in a while. Took about a week, if I recall properly (I cheat, I got 64M and a 20G disk in mine!) Nick.
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 10:37:01PM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Box has two uses: under normal cirumstance, as a thin client to my athlon box elsewhere in the house. As a toolbox incase anything goes wrong with my new athlon, I still can dial out to the net for help and downloads. Debian Etch will need more than 32 MB ram so am starting the planning. I've compared Open-, Net-, and Free-BSD (via google search and reading the three web-sites) and like the security-by-default nature of Open- and its reputation for solid documentation. I'm used to the command line (hate GUI) and vi. Is there any reason that OpenBSD wouldn't be my best choice for this box? Best? Well, it's what I would use. I've personally run with as little as 48MB on i386 arch and it was fine at console or ssh. Given the uses you want, you're probably going to say yes to sshd during install. When you reboot after install it'll generate keys. Plan to go have supper around then. ;) Any further rebooting won't have that penalty. -- Darrin Chandler | Phoenix BSD Users Group [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://bsd.phoenix.az.us/ http://www.stilyagin.com/darrin/ |
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
* Darrin Chandler [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-03-21 20:31:57]: Given the uses you want, you're probably going to say yes to sshd during install. When you reboot after install it'll generate keys. Plan to go have supper around then. ;) Any further rebooting won't have that penalty. Or, if you're really impatient and impractical, generate them on a fast machine and copy them over... -- Travers Buda
Re: Is OpenBSD good/best for my 486?
On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 10:37:01PM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Hello, I've got a 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram, ISA bus, with two drives: 840 MB and 1280 MB IDE. Currently running Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. I've installed and run on 16M of RAM in the last 3 years. If perchance the install freezes, you can try getting to a shell (type ! at any of the install prompts) and run swapctl -a to enable swap. Obviously OpenBSD is the best choice, would you expect any less from people on this list? -- David Terrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] ((meatspace)) http://meat.net/
