pCLI-NoX feedback thread - stay ONTOPIC

[AS]

is there a way I can free memory?

The only one I can think of... is to turn off as much services as possible, i.e. booting at runlevel 1 should minimize the RAM usage.

Woohoo... I've never been that Almighty before!

made a cuple of LOW RAM tests in virtualbox:
72 Mb RAM (64+8), installed successfully
64 Mb RAM failed
68 Mb RAM (64+4): in BIOS disable every additional hardware, (audio, network, serial,m parallel, usb ...), boot using "LiveCD 1", at prompt type "rmmod -a" to remove any unused module.
When I try to manually enable swap before installation, draklive-install hang at some point 
Any additional hint is welcome, however 68/72 Mb are a very good result. 

AS

[melodie]

Hi,
How many tty's are available ? Only 2 or 3 could be kept and the others commented in inittab.

[Hootiegibbon]

is there a way I can free memory?

The only one I can think of... is to turn off as much services as possible, i.e. booting at runlevel 1 should minimize the RAM usage.

Woohoo... I've never been that Almighty before!

made a cuple of LOW RAM tests in virtualbox:
72 Mb RAM (64+8), installed successfully
64 Mb RAM failed
68 Mb RAM (64+4): in BIOS disable every additional hardware, (audio, network, serial,m parallel, usb ...), boot using "LiveCD 1", at prompt type "rmmod -a" to remove any unused module.
When I try to manually enable swap before installation, draklive-install hang at some point 
Any additional hint is welcome, however 68/72 Mb are a very good result. 

AS

I can sucessfully use the LiveCD on a geode based thinclient with 50Megs of user RAM

Host/Kernel/OS  "hootietest" running Linux 2.6.38.8-pclos1 i386 [ PCLinuxOS release 2011 (PCLinuxOS) for i586 ]
CPU Info        Geode Integrated by National Semi 32 KB cache flags( - ) clocked at [ 332.030 MHz ]
National Semiconductor Geode GX2 Graphics Processor  tty resolution ( 128x48 )
Network cards   Realtek RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+, at port: ef00
Processes 54 | Uptime 42min | Memory 33.8/48.9MB | HDD FUJITSU MHA2032AT Size 3GB (0%used) | Runlevel 3 | Client Irssi 0.8.15 | Infobash v3.05

Although to do so it took a change in framebuffer "gxfb" and a few other options relating to acpi (turn it off) noapic etc, after login i had to set the host name manually.

I was not able to test an install on the machine as it only has a 32meg  SSD card in  it.

I am looking at how to cut down the initial overhead at boot without loosing too much hardware compatibility.

I am also looking at fbui and how that works as having an in kernel framebuffer windowing system sounds interesting (especially as its in kernel - no extra libs it seems)

Jase

[Hootiegibbon]

Hi,
How many tty's are available ? Only 2 or 3 could be kept and the others commented in inittab.

removing tty's is not somthing I would want to do in a pure runlevel3/Framebuffer environment its kinda like removing 2 legs from a giraffe - it ain't right

Jase

[melodie]

Hi,
How many tty's are available ? Only 2 or 3 could be kept and the others commented in inittab.

removing tty's is not somthing I would want to do in a pure runlevel3/Framebuffer environment its kinda like removing 2 legs from a giraffe - it ain't right

Jase

This was just one of the few tricks used in older times, and posted by elder geeks, about how to reduce a little the greed of a Linux install on old machines. Tell me who here uses 6 virtual consoles at same time ? The most I ever need may have been 3 ?

Otherwise if someone wants to install it on a super low ram machine, maybe loading and configuring zram kernel module would be of some help ?

[djohnston]

I would rather remove gstreamer and have mplayer as its more of an all in one solution  - for the command line, I also want to get more familier with the framebuffer, the app fbset is currently missing I will include this on the next (if you could look to see if theer is an update for fbset - would be cool)

I don't see an update for fbset, even in the special section.

Somthing else I would like to know about is fbui (linux framebuffer UI) which is - apparently - a framebuffer windowing system built into the kernel, there is even a related wiget set(?!) if anybody knows how to activate this it would be a cool thing

Hadn't heard of fbui before, so I looked it up. Looks promising. However, his docs say to use it with a 2.6.9 kernel (a bit old), and that it's partially working with a 2.6.31 kernel. In any case, using the package(s) requires a recompile of the kernel. But, you probably already knew that.

[AS]

Hi Hootiegibbon,

while testing a change about draklive-install, from ongoto:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,93998.msg790665.html#msg790665

have found that in pCLI-NoX-ISO there exist 2 instance of draklive-install:
/usr/sbin/draklive-install (this should be the correct path)
/usr/bin/draklive-install (this is a copy, IMHO unnecessary), nothing to worry much about, just FYI 

AS

[Hootiegibbon]

Hi Hootiegibbon,

while testing a change about draklive-install, from ongoto:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,93998.msg790665.html#msg790665

have found that in pCLI-NoX-ISO there exist 2 instance of draklive-install:
/usr/sbin/draklive-install (this should be the correct path)
/usr/bin/draklive-install (this is a copy, IMHO unnecessary), nothing to worry much about, just FYI 

AS

thanks as,

there my be the odd lib/bin that ends up being duplicated or simlinked

this due to me manually placing various libs so that apps work but are kept off the rpm database to avoid all those X dependencies

I have added groff and mc in this way, and am trying w3m which works but is currently not rendering inline images despite the image libs being in place.

will work more on this later

jase

[melodie]

thanks as,

there my be the odd lib/bin that ends up being duplicated or simlinked

this due to me manually placing various libs so that apps work but are kept off the rpm database to avoid all those X dependencies

Hi Hootiegibbon,

Do you keep tracks of the files you add out of the rpm database ? What about listing each package which wants to bring in X dependancies ? (For our information).

[Hootiegibbon]

thanks as,

there my be the odd lib/bin that ends up being duplicated or simlinked

this due to me manually placing various libs so that apps work but are kept off the rpm database to avoid all those X dependencies

Hi Hootiegibbon,

Do you keep tracks of the files you add out of the rpm database ? What about listing each package which wants to bring in X dependancies ? (For our information).

that would be too much like hard work, its trial and error, I study the depends on another machine and track back all the dependency tree manually....

the reason for the X dependency comes from the X flag  being added at build time, this may mean that we need libx11_6 and xcb for some rl3 framebuffer apps to work.... although so long as they are not in the rpmdb it will not cause further X deps to be drawn in, and because. this is how some other apps have been added so if someone adds extra apps it will simply overwrite the ones we have in place - keeping pCLI-NoX fully repo compatible

jase

[melodie]

this is how some other apps have been added so if someone adds extra apps it will simply overwrite the ones we have in place - keeping pCLI-NoX fully repo compatible

jase

Or they will just be forgotten in the /usr/lib directory, as being not overwritten because the version number will be different. It might not be a big deal, not much space taken... and maybe no better solution can be used. Or wouldn't it be possible to put theses extra libs in /usr/local/lib directory, and have a symlink in /usr/lib that points to them ? This could be a way to keep the hand more easily on the libs installed by hands ?

I am very much interested by the work you are doing for this project, and appreciate it a lot. So I hope you don't take it as a critic. The idea I have in mind is only about giving some ideas so that it could become a version that once created and ready to go, could go far and long, being as clean as it would be possible to make it, since the start.

Regards,
Mélodie

[ongoto]

Just a quick FYI   

There's a new version of PCLOSlive-install here

ongoto

[gseaman]

I finally had some time try out the latest iso as a liveusb. Works completely as expected as far as I went. I will try to find time to use it to set up a packaging environment. Does anyone know if pkg-utils requires X? (Obviously, pkgutils-kde and pkgutils-thunar do ) If so, I'll try to just create copies of the build directories and .rpmmacros from my kde install.

Galen

[ongoto]

^^^^ Thats a good idea gseaman.  I was thinking along those same lines for a development environment.

Making some progress here.... second attempt....

Downloaded the iso again and installed anew.
Initial boot attempt dropped me to runlevel 1
From there, init 3 took me to login

/root/ directory is empty by default.
copied contents of /etc/skel/ to /root/
added 3 to end of kernel line.
have rebooted successfully to runlevel 3 several times since then.
no degradation apparent as in my previous install.
reply #20

Haven't changed hostname this install.
noted that /etc/sysconfig/network contains no hostname.

Haven't downloaded any apps or updated apt yet.
screen runs ok but I'm clueless at that point. Need practice.  LOL

Seems pretty stable so far.  Still scratching around.  I'll add things slowly and try and catch the rats as they appear.  I'm happy just seeing it install and boot consistently.

ongoto

[ongoto]

I finally had some time try out the latest iso as a liveusb. Works completely as expected as far as I went. I will try to find time to use it to set up a packaging environment. Does anyone know if pkg-utils requires X? (Obviously, pkgutils-kde and pkgutils-thunar do ) If so, I'll try to just create copies of the build directories and .rpmmacros from my kde install.

Galen

Tried to install easyrpmbuilder
Synaptic says 'Could not mark all packages
Depends: rpm-build

then rpm-build:
 Depends: rpm (= 4.4.6-18pclos2007)
 Depends: rpm-mandriva-setup-build
               
Is this stuff being worked on/held back because of switch to Yum?