Hi The installation notes for 4.11 say, referring to i386 platform " ...after installation, FreeBSD itself can be run in 4-8MB of RAM with a pared-down kernel" The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say "FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM". Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something different being measured? I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. Can I reduce the amount of memory required? I have compiled a reduced kernel but it swaps like mad when compiling. Kismet and deps took over 12 hours. Just after boot and not doing anything it has about 2mb free and 17 processes running. Thanks for any suggestions Chris
Chris wrote:> Hi > > The installation notes for 4.11 say, referring to i386 platform > " ...after installation, FreeBSD itself can be run in 4-8MB of RAM > with a pared-down kernel" > > The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say > "FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM". > > Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something > different being measured? > > I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a > wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. Can I reduce > the amount of memory required? I have compiled a reduced kernel but it > swaps like mad when compiling. Kismet and deps took over 12 hours. > Just after boot and not doing anything it has about 2mb free and 17 > processes running. > > Thanks for any suggestions > > Chris >Sorry should have said: tosh# uname -a FreeBSD tosh.13dog.org 5.4-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE #0: Fri Jun 3 12:51:33 BST 2005 root@tosh.13dog.org:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/OLDCARD.TOSH i386
hello,> The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say > "FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM". > [ .. ] > I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a > wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4.I've run 5.X for about a year on a Pentium60 with 16M as ethernet router/NAT; flawless, excellent perf (untill it died a couple of weeks ago). net-booting via PXE though, no idea whether you can *install* with less than 24M, running only seems OK Arno
On Fri, Aug 12, 2005 at 09:38:43PM +0100, Chris wrote:> Hi > > The installation notes for 4.11 say, referring to i386 platform > " ...after installation, FreeBSD itself can be run in 4-8MB of RAM with > a pared-down kernel" > > The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say > "FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM". > > Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something > different being measured?The quoted text is comparing *installation* requirements (24 on 5.4) with minimum memory needed to run a pared-down kernel *after installation* (4-8MB on 4.11). Apples and oranges. Kris -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 187 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20050812/7d2666a7/attachment.bin
On Fri, 2005-Aug-12 21:38:43 +0100, Chris wrote:>The installation notes for 4.11 say, referring to i386 platform >" ...after installation, FreeBSD itself can be run in 4-8MB of RAM with >a pared-down kernel" > >The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say >"FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM". > >Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something >different being measured?As Kris said, you are measuring two different things. Note the phrase "after installation" in your first quote. Installation takes substantially more memory because FreeBSD needs to load a full-sized GENERIC kernel, allocate space for a RAM disk to hold the installation filesystem process and have enough RAM left over to actually run the installaton processes. Once you've installed FreeBSD, you can prune down the kernel and you don't need the RAM disk. That said, 5.x is larger than 4.x (which is larger than 3.x, etc).>I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a >wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. Can I reduce >the amount of memory required? I have compiled a reduced kernel but it >swaps like mad when compiling. Kismet and deps took over 12 hours. Just >after boot and not doing anything it has about 2mb free and 17 processes >running.24MB should be adequate as a SOHO wireless router/NAT box but doing compilations will stress it significantly (as you've noticed). It would be too small if you were going to run lots of applications (named, squid etc) 2MB free sounds about right. The Unix kernel sees free space as wasted space and tries to avoid having too much of it. You can add "inactive" to the free memory to get a better idea of how much RAM isn't being used, and the cache will shrink if processes need for RAM. As long as your system isn't paging during normal operation (normal operation for a firewall excludes compiling ports or the kernel), then you have enough RAM. 17 processes sounds a bit high. You can probably find some that aren't necessary - in particular, you probably only want one or two gettys. -- Peter Jeremy
In message: <42FD08D3.2080300@childeric.freeserve.co.uk>
Chris <chris@childeric.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
: The installation notes for 5.4 and 6 (the floppies README.TXT) say
: "FreeBSD for the i386 requires ...at least 24 MB of RAM".
:
: Did the memory requirement really jump that much or is something
: different being measured?
Not really, if you know what you are doing.
: I have on old tosh 110CT laptop with 24mb memory I want to set up as a
: wireless router/NAT box but would prefer to use 6 or 5.4. Can I reduce
: the amount of memory required? I have compiled a reduced kernel but it
: swaps like mad when compiling. Kismet and deps took over 12 hours. Just
: after boot and not doing anything it has about 2mb free and 17 processes
: running.
You can deploy to one of these laptops, but chances are good that the
extra memory required for large compiles (anything bigger than hello
world) will swap its little brains out.
You can trim the kernel down a lot for the 100CT. You can eliminate
all the SCSI stuff, all the raid stuff, most of the pci stuff, all the
old crusty ISA ethernet hardware. You can trim down usb quite a bit,
eliminate eisa. That helps a lot. I can boot on my 16MB laptop, but
it is a little painful to do much on. On that I can elimiante usb and
pci since there's no pci bus at all. Oh, and firewire too!
Warner