3212
Comment:
|
3339
|
Deletions are marked like this. | Additions are marked like this. |
Line 7: | Line 7: |
*Sarge netinstall CD (ISO from here: http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/daily/i386/current/sarge-i386-netinst.iso ) |
Installing Debian on a laptop with only ["32MB"] of RAM and a usb drive.
I have just successfully got the Debian installer to run on an old Compaq Armada with only ["32MB"] of RAM... this is how:
What you need: *Sarge netinstall CD (ISO from here: http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/daily/i386/current/sarge-i386-netinst.iso ) *Usb port *Some kind of USB memory stick (I tried my worst case scenario - I used a ["16MB"] Sony Memory Stick in a USB card reader - it was a little slow, but it worked fine.
Boot off the CD, do linux26, then when it comes up it will warn you that you have a critically low amount of RAM and advise you to mount some swap ASAP.
As soon as you have chosen your language etc you can switch over to tty2 (with <Alt-F2>) and set up the USB swap...
If you left it a little while and went over to tty4 (<Alt-F4>) you would find that the syslog tail would show that the installer process was running out of memory, being killed and endlessly looping:
Feb 20 01:48:57 anna["3278"]: DEBUG: resolver (lowmem): mark Feb 20 01:48:57 anna["3278"]: DEBUG: resolver (bugreporter-udeb): mark Feb 20 01:48:57 anna["3278"]: DEBUG: resolver (mkreiserfs-udeb): mark Feb 20 01:48:57 anna["3278"]: DEBUG: resolver (wireless-tools-udeb): mark Feb 20 01:49:29 init: ^["MProcess"] '/sbin/debian-installer' (pid 537) exited. Scheduling it for restart. Feb 20 01:49:29 init: ^["MStarting"] pid 4653, console /dev/vc/1: '/sbin/debian-installer'
OK... the process... firstly... the Sarge netinstall doesn't create device files for your USB devices, so you have to make them yourself:
mknod /dev/sda b 8 0 mknod /dev/sda1 b 8 1
modprobe usb-storage
I skipped the next step because I had fdisked the card, and done mkfs.ext3 on it first... but if you don't want to wipe your card:
modprobe vfat mkdir /mnt mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
Then I made a shell script on the card using nano, and ran it:
# echo "Calculating free disk space on /dev/sda1 ..." FREE=$(df /dev/sda1 || grep /dev/sda1 || cut -c 41-50) let COUNT=FREE-1 # echo "Creating $COUNT block swapfile /mnt/swapfile ..." dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/swapfile bs=1024 count=$COUNT # echo "Making swap ..." mkswap /mnt/swapfile # echo "Mounting swap ..." swapon /mnt/swapfile
Then you will find you should have enough free memory that the installer will work :o)
You will notice here that I made the swapfile 1 block smaller than the available free space. That was so I had somewhere to save my shell script as I was writing it. You may just want to use the whole free space, or even the raw device.
Another box claimed back for Debian!
# # To do it without using fdisk (slightly slower) # dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/swapfile bs=1024 # -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14561280 Feb 20 01:19 /mnt/swapfile SIZE=$(ls -l /mnt/swapfile||cut -c 30-43) let FULL=SIZE/1024 let COUNT=FULL-1 dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/swapfile bs=1024 count=$COUNT #
# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 16 MB, 16220160 bytes 4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 495 cylinders Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 495 15832 83 Linux