Bug 77304
| Summary: | FreeBSD 5.3 can not be installed on a 16 MB old pentium 75 MHz machine. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | Documentation | Reporter: | Ramiro Aceves <ea1abz> |
| Component: | Books & Articles | Assignee: | Bruce A. Mah <bmah> |
| Status: | Closed FIXED | ||
| Severity: | Affects Only Me | ||
| Priority: | Normal | ||
| Version: | Latest | ||
| Hardware: | Any | ||
| OS: | Any | ||
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 07:01 am, Ramiro Aceves wrote: > >Number: 77304 > >Category: docs > >Synopsis: FreeBSD 5.3 can not be installed on a 16 MB old pentium 75 > > MHz machine. Confidential: no > >Severity: non-critical > >Priority: low > >Responsible: freebsd-doc > >State: open > >Quarter: > >Keywords: > >Date-Required: > >Class: doc-bug > >Submitter-Id: current-users > >Arrival-Date: Wed Feb 09 12:10:23 GMT 2005 > >Closed-Date: > >Last-Modified: > >Originator: Ramiro Aceves > >Release: 5.3 Release > >Organization: > > none > > >Environment: > > FreeBSD freebsd.remigio 5.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE #1: Wed Jan 19 > 03:22:06 CET 2005 root@freebsd.remigio:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/MIKERNEL > i386 > > >Description: > > FreeBSD 5.3 can not be installed from floppies in a 16 MB RAM old Pentium > 75 MHz machine. It just reboots after pressing return on the beastie > screen,not showing any kernel messages. > > The docs placed into the "floppies" directory on the CDROM say: > > 1.2 Hardware Requirements > > FreeBSD for the i386 requires a 486 or better processor to install > and run(although FreeBSD can run on 386 processors with a custom > kernel)and at least 8 megs of RAM to install and 7 megs to run. > > >How-To-Repeat: > > Just boot from the floppies. Wait until the beastie logo comes. Press > return or wait for 10 seconds. It reboots. > > >Fix: > > Add more memory. 32 MB RAM work perfectly here. I have not tested 24MB. > I think the docs should be updated. > Thank you very much. Yes, they should. I looked at my 5.3 CD and the kernel and uncompressed mfsroot are: -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 5828080 Nov 4 23:19 kernel/kernel -rw-rw-r-- 1 john wheel 4423680 Feb 9 11:09 /tmp/mfsroot One of the changes in 5.x is to load the kernel at a physical address of 4mb rather than 1mb to work around bugs with PSE and PGE on certain CPUs, so that means you have to have 4mb + kernel + mfsroot. Also, the kernel includes bss, so the real size for the kernel is: text data bss dec hex filename 4416289 510984 327200 5254473 502d49 kernel/kernel Adding it all up comes out to 13872457 bytes, which is just over 13MB (13631488 bytes). However, the kernel requires some amount of memory that it allocates during very early startup for things like page tables and it allocates that stuff at the end of the kernel + modules, so that all has to come from the remaining 2+ MB, which is probably not enough memory. I do think 24MB should be the minimum to install. The minimum to run using a stripped down kernel without an mfsroot is probably still very small, though I'm not sure 7MB would cut it. Probably at least 12MB or so. -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve" = http://www.FreeBSD.org Well, here is a patch that simply incorporates jhb's figures. I'm cc'ing
both jhb and bmah (I beg pardon if this is inbox clutter), as I am certainly
not qualified to be authoritative on this, and don't wish to start any
forest
fires, either. I guess we point "minimalist" types to picobsd more often
now? After all, even a 24MB box is rather rare these days, I'd suspect....
Kevin Kinsey
[kadmin@archangel][/usr/src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/installation/common]
diff -crN install.sgml install.sgml.edit
*** install.sgml Mon Feb 14 12:55:22 2005
--- install.sgml.edit Mon Feb 14 12:50:36 2005
***************
*** 79,85 ****
<para arch="i386,pc98">&os; for the &arch.print; requires a 486 or
better
processor to install and run (although &os; can run on 386
processors with
! a custom kernel) and at least 8 megs of RAM to install and 7 megs to
run. You will need at least 150MB of free hard drive space for the
most minimal installation. See below for ways of shrinking
existing DOS partitions in order to install &os;.</para>
--- 79,85 ----
<para arch="i386,pc98">&os; for the &arch.print; requires a 486
or better
processor to install and run (although &os; can run on 386
processors with
! a custom kernel) and at least 24 megs of RAM to install and 12 megs to
run. You will need at least 150MB of free hard drive space for the
most minimal installation. See below for ways of shrinking
existing DOS partitions in order to install &os;.</para>
State Changed From-To: open->closed Committed a slight variant of the patch to CURRENT (install.sgml rev. 1.29) and RELENG_5 (install.sgml rev. 1.27.2.1). Thanks! Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-doc->bmah I touched this PR last. |
FreeBSD 5.3 can not be installed from floppies in a 16 MB RAM old Pentium 75 MHz machine. It just reboots after pressing return on the beastie screen,not showing any kernel messages. The docs placed into the "floppies" directory on the CDROM say: 1.2 Hardware Requirements FreeBSD for the i386 requires a 486 or better processor to install and run(although FreeBSD can run on 386 processors with a custom kernel)and at least 8 megs of RAM to install and 7 megs to run. Fix: Add more memory. 32 MB RAM work perfectly here. I have not tested 24MB. I think the docs should be updated. Thank you very much. How-To-Repeat: Just boot from the floppies. Wait until the beastie logo comes. Press return or wait for 10 seconds. It reboots.