Re: partition layout
On Thu, 2007-10-04 at 17:10 -0700, Clint Pachl wrote: The only thing I would use that 486 for would be an X client, with a good graphics card, a router, or as a command line tinkering system. Yes, a 486 is still plenty of system for use as a router, assuming the right networking hardware is available for it. Heck, I miss my old Pentium 100 I was using as a router (well, sort of). -- Shawn K. Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: partition layout
On Sat, Oct 06, 2007 at 05:14:53AM -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: On Thu, 2007-10-04 at 17:10 -0700, Clint Pachl wrote: The only thing I would use that 486 for would be an X client, with a good graphics card, a router, or as a command line tinkering system. Yes, a 486 is still plenty of system for use as a router, assuming the right networking hardware is available for it. Heck, I miss my old Pentium 100 I was using as a router (well, sort of). It also works just fine as: firewall for dial-up print server with apsfilter home mail server, Wordprocessor with vim + LaTex Python development (non-GUI) light browsing with lynx and links/elinks small-data-set postgresql (home use) and anything else for home use _except_ for running X-apps locally (other than gv or something for previewing documents before printing). The only things I cannot do comfortably on the 486: Surf the web with firefox/konqueror watch movies Doesn't have a great sound card so not the best music box graphical spreadsheet Install Debian (need to do a drive-shuffle from another box) patch BSD Run Debian (since they admit that they link to many libraries not required for normal use, slowing the execs and increasing memory useage). Doug.
Re: partition layout
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: It also works just fine as: home mail server, Unless, of course, you run Perl-based anti-spam filters... I just upgraded a P2 2x450 to P3 2x933 and it still seems sluggish.
Re: partition layout
On 10/4/07, Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 07:46:01PM -0400, Nick Holland wrote: 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. snip a very intertesting, educative and long discussion about using an old 486 with an ISA bus as a desktop machine If you're trying to install OpenBSD on a 486 machine just to keep your proficience levels, why not just virtualize it on whatever is the OS that will boot the P-II? I have a vmware image running quite comfortably on my desktop at work.
Re: partition layout
Marcus Andree [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If you're trying to install OpenBSD on a 486 machine just to keep your proficience levels, why not just virtualize it on whatever is the OS that will boot the P-II? I suppose the real answer to that is along the lines of 'there is nothing that really compares to the smell and sound of early-vintage equipment - the crunchy sound of ancient hard disks spinning, the smell of solder and the tangy whiff of a motherboard getting close to its final burnout' I have a vmware image running quite comfortably on my desktop at work. qemu works too. -- Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.datadok.no/ http://www.nuug.no/ Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds.
Re: partition layout
On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 08:39:57AM -0300, Marcus Andree wrote: On 10/4/07, Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 07:46:01PM -0400, Nick Holland wrote: Douglas A. Tutty wrote: 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. If you're trying to install OpenBSD on a 486 machine just to keep your proficience levels, why not just virtualize it on whatever is the OS that will boot the P-II? I have a vmware image running quite comfortably on my desktop at work. Because the P-II only has an 850 MB hard drive and won't boot any other drive (even though the other drives test and boot perfectly on the 486 with any OS I have), and only has 64 MB ram. I need (well, there's need and then there's NEED), two computers. The upstairs one functions like a CLI + X terminal (thank you OpenSSH). That P-II was given to me free loaded with cat hair and over heated; it could konk out any time. The 486 has been kept clean as a whistle on clean power all its life and has never ever given me any problems. When the P-II finally dies, the 486 will be my CLI+X terminal. The only question is will I be able to keep up with security patches on OpenBSD now that Debian won't run on it. OpenBSD will also run on the P-II but with only an 850 MB drive, I can't do patches. Doug.
Re: partition layout
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): a100 MB / b128 MB swap c1.1 GB d256 MB /tmp e ~640 MB /var wd1 (8.1 GB drive): a100 MB spare / b128 MB swap c8.1 GB d1.0 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. Slow does not even begin to describe how slow this 486 will be, especially running your list of applications above, not to mention system compilation. In less than one week of running that system, waiting for it to load, run, and compile, you'll have wasted the amount of time it would have taken you to just ask your friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers for an old giveaway computer. You have to know some one directly or indirectly that is upgrading to Vista and their old P3 or P4 with 512MB RAM max just won't run Vista so they upgrade their hardware. I get all the spare computers I need, for free, just by asking. Just last year I got a P4 1.6GHz with 512MB of RAM from the lady we bought our house from. I just mentioned that I work with computers and she said, hey I'm buying a new Dell and I'm only going to send my old one back to Dell for recycling, do you want it? She only asked that I remove the hard drive for her. Dell wasn't going to give her any credit for it, only pay for the shipping costs. The only thing I would use that 486 for would be an X client, with a good graphics card, a router, or as a command line tinkering system. BTW, your partitioning scheme looks ok. The only thing I would do is increase the swap space. For me, just to get X and fvwm running takes about 60MB to 70MB. I use Seamonkey for my browser and checking top shows that it is currently using 144MB. With the list of apps you want to run with only 32MB of RAM and 128MB of swap (256MB if you put swap on both disks), you will definitely be starving the system of resources. Can you say slooow? Have fun! Are these partitions a good size in the right order or are they any suggestions for improvement? Thanks, Doug.
partition layout
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): a100 MB / b128 MB swap c1.1 GB d256 MB /tmp e ~640 MB /var wd1 (8.1 GB drive): a100 MB spare / b128 MB swap c8.1 GB d1.0 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.
Re: partition layout
On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 12:40:25PM -0400, Stephan Andre' wrote: On Wednesday 03 October 2007 11:50:40 Douglas A. Tutty wrote: Here's what I'm thinking: wd0 (1.1 GB drive): a100 MB / b128 MB swap c1.1 GB d256 MB /tmp e ~640 MB /var wd1 (8.1 GB drive): a100 MB spare / b128 MB swap c8.1 GB d1.0 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? 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. I don't necessarily want to run it, just install it, read the man pages, etc. I know already that this box will run X, links+, xpdf, and can ssh to my Athlon64 box to run Konqeror. 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. Since both drives are WD Cavier 3600's I'd guess that they're the same speed. So how would this look: wd0 a1 GB / c1 GB wd1 a7.6 GB /usr b512 MB swap c 8.1 GB Doug. 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. I'm in Kingston Ontario. There aren't any local computer shops with used computers. They break, people take them to the recycling center and buy a new one. Doug.
Re: partition layout
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): a100 MB / b128 MB swap c1.1 GB d256 MB /tmp e ~640 MB /var wd1 (8.1 GB drive): a100 MB spare / b128 MB swap c8.1 GB d1.0 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'
Re: partition layout
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. you might want to spend more time on that PII system... 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). Ouch. ... 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. have you tested that 1G WD drive? Those were curiously cranky, reliable drives. Yes, that's what I meant to say: some years ago, I became the proud owner of something like 60 machines with those drives in them, ranging from never having been powered up (still had factory load on 'em!) to being very heavily used. The majority did not spin up on their own, but if you manually twisted them, they would fire up and stay running...until you turned 'em off long enough to cool back down. Here's what I'm thinking: ...[snip a very functional plan] Do you think that this will give me all the room I need to install and keep patched: full install icewm or Xfce Konqueror on a 486?? Firefox on a 486? With 32M RAM??? 18489 nick 20 73M 93M sleeppoll313:36 0.10% firefox-bin No freaking way. I don't like running Firefox on my 850MHz laptop. a pdf reader or two (Evince, Kpdf, Xpdf) mplayer on a 486? 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. Not just compiles. Most of those apps just won't run on a 486 in anything more than a oh, look, it came up! sort of way. Are these partitions a good size in the right order or are they any suggestions for improvement? your (partitioning) plan is not bad, but here are some thoughts: Assuming your 1G drive works and you don't bust your knuckles spinning the thing up manually (don't ask), don't use it on this system, but rather use it to place all the install files on. That way, you don't have to do it right the first time. Load it up on another machine (or on this machine before you remove its current OS). Put it in as the secondary drive on the system, boot off floppy, point the install media to the 1G drive as the source for the files (it will read FAT and FAT32). Every time you download a new package, put it on this drive. More reality checks: 1) Many 486 machines have only one IDE port. 2) Many 8G drives don't want to work as a secondary to a 1G drive (but the 1G drive will probably work fine as a secondary to a 8G) 3) IF you get X running on this thing, you will very possibly find that quits working for 4.2. Many old systems like this will need XF3, as XF4 and X.org don't support many of the old drivers. XF3 is gone for 4.2 (and there was much rejoicing). 4) At best, this thing will be an X terminal for you, you won't run many X apps on it. 5) You probably don't know how to configure an ISA NIC 6) I'm trying to forget how to configure an ISA NIC (damn flashbacks) 7) You don't want to know what I will hopefully be putting out on the curb for trash day ..er..next week, since I'm spending tonight answering email. 8) with 32M RAM, swap will be your friend. You need to get out more and meet better friends. This is going to be a really frustrating machine to learn OpenBSD on. Learning almost always requires making mistakes (even if completely intentionally made!). OpenBSD will run on a 486 better than just about any other OS now, but that's not saying much at all, unfortunately. Just logging into the machine will be painful. I wish there was an economical way to get some of the stuff I toss out to some of the people in the world who would love to have it. Nick.
Re: partition layout
On 2007/10/03 19:46, Nick Holland wrote: 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. you might want to spend more time on that PII system... yes. an OS booted from another drive can often use a drive that the BIOS is unable to see. on a 486? With 32M RAM??? 18489 nick 20 73M 93M sleeppoll313:36 0.10% firefox-bin w3m or dillo, maybe. Opera is probably pushing it. 93M isn't bad going for firefox, think mine was around 500M earlier... I wish there was an economical way to get some of the stuff I toss out to some of the people in the world who would love to have it. freecycle.org might be worth a look.
Re: partition layout
On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 02:03:41AM +0100, Stuart Henderson wrote: On 2007/10/03 19:46, Nick Holland wrote: I wish there was an economical way to get some of the stuff I toss out to some of the people in the world who would love to have it. freecycle.org might be worth a look. or see if there's something in your community like this: http://www.nextsteprecycling.org/ went there today (on my bicycle :) to get a mb with an auich(4) device. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
Re: partition layout
On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 07:46:01PM -0400, Nick Holland wrote: 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. you might want to spend more time on that PII system... Yeah, I've tried all the BIOS options that I can find, it just doesn't like any drive but the 850 MB it has; it will only take one 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). Ouch. ... 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. have you tested that 1G WD drive? Those were curiously cranky, reliable drives. Yes, that's what I meant to say: some years ago, I became the proud owner of something like 60 machines with those drives in them, ranging from never having been powered up (still had factory load on 'em!) to being very heavily used. The majority did not spin up on their own, but if you manually twisted them, they would fire up and stay running...until you turned 'em off long enough to cool back down. Both drives are just fine. Here's what I'm thinking: ...[snip a very functional plan] Do you think that this will give me all the room I need to install and keep patched: full install icewm or Xfce Konqueror on a 486?? Firefox on a 486? With 32M RAM??? 18489 nick 20 73M 93M sleeppoll313:36 0.10% firefox-bin No freaking way. I don't like running Firefox on my 850MHz laptop. a pdf reader or two (Evince, Kpdf, Xpdf) mplayer on a 486? 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. Not just compiles. Most of those apps just won't run on a 486 in anything more than a oh, look, it came up! sort of way. Before Debian released Etch, this 486 box was running everything but Konquerer and Firefox just fine. Sure, xpdf rendering a page may take 20 seconds or so but everything else was OK. So scratch Konq, Firefox and ofcourse mplayer as runnable apps. Are these partitions a good size in the right order or are they any suggestions for improvement? your (partitioning) plan is not bad, but here are some thoughts: Assuming your 1G drive works and you don't bust your knuckles spinning the thing up manually (don't ask), don't use it on this system, but rather use it to place all the install files on. That way, you don't have to do it right the first time. Load it up on another machine (or on this machine before you remove its current OS). Put it in as the secondary drive on the system, boot off floppy, point the install media to the 1G drive as the source for the files (it will read FAT and FAT32). This 486 box is my only free box for testing and getting proficient with keeping OpenBSD up-to-date. My Athlon has Etch on it and is my main box; does everything including watching DVDs full-screen. My P-II is my upstairs slim-X client that seems to only take an 850 drive. That leaves my 486 for OBSD testing. More reality checks: 1) Many 486 machines have only one IDE port. This has two. 2) Many 8G drives don't want to work as a secondary to a 1G drive (but the 1G drive will probably work fine as a secondary to a 8G) This pair is fine both ways. 3) IF you get X running on this thing, you will very possibly find that quits working for 4.2. Many old systems like this will need XF3, as XF4 and X.org don't support many of the old drivers. XF3 is gone for 4.2 (and there was much rejoicing). X runs just fine under OBSD: 4.0 under X version 3; 4.1 with Xorg. It has an S3Vision864 with sdac, 1 MB video ram. Does 1024x768x8bit @ 75Hz 4) At best, this thing will be an X terminal for you, you won't run many X apps on it. That's all it needs to do. 5) You probably don't know how to configure an ISA NIC Yes I do. Already done it under OBSD. Its an ne clone that matches the kernel. If it didn't, I've got Absolute OpenBSD and see that the kernel can be tweaked without recompiling it. Besides, I can always learn how to set up a ppp link over a serial cable in OBSD. Did that all the time in Debian before I could afford an NIC. NFS is rather slow and X is impossible. Other than that, it works. 6) I'm trying to forget how to configure an ISA NIC (damn flashbacks) Perhaps I can help. :) 7) You don't want to know what I will hopefully be putting out on the curb for trash day ..er..next week, since I'm spending tonight answering email. How close to Kingston Ontario are you? Assuming that you're talking about a computer, they should not go in the trash. If nobody wants them they should be recycled. 8)
