[SOLVED] OpenBox onto a Dell GX150 with 128Mb RAM

[BJF]

Good Morning. This machine was bought at a Government Surplus sale about 4 years ago with XP aboard and running. It has had Puppy installed since purchase and I want to turn it into a mail and web browser for the rest of the family. I downloaded and burnt Openbox, but the Live CD freezes the mouse and becomes unresponsive if any attempt is made from the "issued" desktop to install to the HDD.
I would really like to put one of our distro's onto it and yes, a trip to the RAM shop ought to be high on my list, but other people have performed more difficult feats of installation than this. What really snots me is that XP will install and run!
Can anyone point me at a derivation that is current and could be applied please. I'm up for the challenge! Bonzai?

Thanks,
John.

[djohnston]

I downloaded and burnt Openbox, but the Live CD freezes the mouse and becomes unresponsive if any attempt is made from the "issued" desktop to install to the HDD.

Not enough info to go on. What option did you choose from the boot menu? Have you tried safe video mode? Sounds like you're getting a desktop, but can't install. Is that right?

Are you using onboard video or an added video card? How much video memory is there? I honestly believe you won't get anywhere without at least 256 MB of RAM. That PC should hold 512 MB. You could try Iced Latte, but I still believe you're going to need at least 256 MB.

[Crow]

I only found Honda GX160  under "del gx160 computer specs"   

[BJF]

Time for a tidy-up.
It's a GX150, with 128mb of RAM, and it will go to the desktop but if Install or anything else is chosen then the HDD activates briefly then falls silent, no application window appears, and sometimes the mouse freezes. Eventually the optical drive falls silent and a hard shut-down is needed. I've tried all my old Live disks back to and including 2007 with similar results. Sounds like the project is doomed without more RAM to me.

[Hootiegibbon]

I downloaded and burnt Openbox, but the Live CD freezes the mouse and becomes unresponsive if any attempt is made from the "issued" desktop to install to the HDD.

Not enough info to go on. What option did you choose from the boot menu? Have you tried safe video mode? Sounds like you're getting a desktop, but can't install. Is that right?

Are you using onboard video or an added video card? How much video memory is there? I honestly believe you won't get anywhere without at least 256 MB of RAM. That PC should hold 512 MB. You could try Iced Latte, but I still believe you're going to need at least 256 MB.

Iced Latte will install on to machines with 128megs of ram, i have doen so on several tests on various machines - including an Optiplex GX1


I would ensure that tere is at least a small swap space available to assist in the install - the "issue" here is actually the default level of compression although if you pre-partition the device and include a swap partition annd use the ide=nodma (old dells are picky) boot option it should be ok. and currently the latte iso is updateable.

I have recently worked on an iso for a PCLinuxOS magazine article that is based on an updated Latte, although this also uses the default compression.

If you try Latte and it does not work, post back as I will organise an iso using gzip compression for you to try (this will make a larger iso but lighter at lower intensity on ram use)

EDIT:

Have worked on an minimalish iso with fvwm using gzip encryption its size is circa 460megs

Host/Kernel/OS  "localhost.localdomain" running Linux 2.6.38.8-pclos3.bfs i386 [ PCLinuxOS-Light release 2011 (Iced-Latte edition) for i686 ]
CPU Info        Celeron (Mendocino) 128 KB cache flags( - ) clocked at [ 399.419 MHz ]
Videocard       S3 ViRGE/MX+MV  X.Org 1.10.4  [ 800x600@60.0hz ]
Network cards   Realtek RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+, at port: 2000
Processes 93 | Uptime 7min | Memory 40.0/121.0MB | HDD ATA TOSHIBA MK4313MA Size 4GB (31%used) | GLX Renderer Software Rasterizer | GLX Version Yes | Client Weechat 0.3.6 | Infobash v3.05

Jase  

[BJF]

Dear Mr Gibbon,

I'll dig out a Puppy CD and GPart the drive into a 250Mb swap and the rest as / tonight and see what happens. Iced Latte could be my weapon of choice, it certainly tries harder than even Bonsai to install but the Activity widget on the taskbar goes that strong tea colour behind the lime and orange spikes and the clock stops. Although the mouse doesn't freeze it is plainly overwhelming the poor thing.

Do I edit menu.lst from outside after a successful install and put ide=nodma on a separate line, or.... where? New territory for me here.


Cheers,
John.

[Hootiegibbon]

OK to help out here is a link to a copy of the iso created

Low RAM iso

Notes: this is a farily minimal iso it has some apps on there that I consider light xxxterm web browser(flash enabled) sylpheed email, simpleburn, xnview, pcmanfm. It has FVWM as its default window manager with ratpoison as an option also, this is based off my own personal remaster (which is based on Latte) there is very little avtually configured

It is 463 megs due to the use of gzip compression instead of xz compression (there is ~100megs difference between the two)

the md5sum is  7dd3c9fe0dcc25b250ff6733d138049d

I offer this to anyone who needs a low RAM usage iso

Should there be any issues in installing try booting with the ide-nodma and/or noirqpoll boot options, to use a boot option , select 'kernel' at the boot menu (can be any on the boot options) and add the appropriate option - its also worth checking out the 'mem= ' boot option   

Enjoy

Jase

[Crow]

Great Jase, a friend with an old laptop will love this

Thank you

[djohnston]

Great Jase, a friend with an old laptop will love this

Thank you

+1 I want to try this on my 512MB PIII. Thanks, Jase, aka Mr. Gibbon. 

[djohnston]

I only found Honda GX160  under "del gx160 computer specs"   

Crow, I think it's because you forgot an L. He said Dell GX160, bit it's a Dell GX150.

[Crow]

I only found Honda GX160  under "del gx160 computer specs"   

Crow, I think it's because you forgot an L. He said Dell GX160, bit it's a Dell GX150.

           

[BJF]

Hootie:

Slight progress with the Latte distro, but if I try to assign / to the chosen partition (not the swap!) to install, the cd closes out and ejects.

Got your iso and have that to the "Computing total size" point where it has now frozen. I used ide-nodma. Any ideas?  

Thanks.

[djohnston]

Slight progress with the Latte distro, but if I try to assign / to the chosen partition (not the swap!) to install, the cd closes out and ejects.

What filesystem did you assign for the root partition, and how large is it? Also, after creating the swap partition, did you go ahead and format it and mount it before trying to install?

[Hootiegibbon]

Hootie:

Slight progress with the Latte distro, but if I try to assign / to the chosen partition (not the swap!) to install, the cd closes out and ejects.

Got your iso and have that to the "Computing total size" point where it has now frozen. I used ide-nodma. Any ideas?  

Thanks.

ok here is what I would try

at the boot screen select fbdev, and then use the kernel selection to add both "ide=nodma" and "3"  

This will boot you to a Text login

Login as guest and su to root

then type

startx draklive-install

This should bring up the installer without any window manager.

once the installer finishes it will drop you back to the text environment and you will need to reboot

if this fails could you post the results of 'lspci |grep -i vga'  (without quotes)

other notes, on low-ram lowcpu systems I would use the jfs filesystem for / and ext4 for any /home

Jase

[BJF]

Hootie:

Started with FBDEV and using the No ACPI kernel option added the additional bits. That took me to the log-in but startx is rejected and x does not start. It gave me a convolute list of reasons why and please don't ask me to copy them down! So I re-Puppy-ed the swap size up to 500Mb and used the install boot choice with mem= and have arrived at the install point where total size is being computed and it's frozen. At the moment I'm wildcatting with combinations of boot and kernel choices and heading for a terminal.
OK, couldn't do the grep because would you believe neither of the keyboards have a pipe key(!!!), so typed the command anyway without the last bit and arrived at a menu that means a lot more to you than to me. Just to push my luck, I did draklive-install. The drives whirred, no screen appeared, and it froze.