[NCLUG] Build a Linux kernel for a 486 machine.

[Mike Loseke]

Thus spake Michael Dwyer:
[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> > I want to set a 486 machine as a router/gateway machine. Is it
> possible?
> > What is the minimum requirement for this PC(Memory, Hard drive etc)?
> 
> Minimum is i386, about 8MB, and I'm not sure about the HDD requirements.
> Suffice to say, if you are just running a router/gateway, you can fit
> everything on a floppy.
> 
> Matt makes an excellent suggestion about checking out the linux router
> project.  You might also look into the Linuxcare Bootable Business
> Card -- They have links to a number of tiny linux distros.
> 
> I ran on a 386/16 with 16MB.  It took most of the day to compile a
> kernel on the machine. :)  But it worked fine.  I used the A and N sets
> of Slackware, for basic support plus some networking.

 I have a 386/40 with 32MB in it running. The jiffies reset 82 days ago,
so it's been up 500+ days. :-) Every once in awhile I put a shiny new
kernel on it and IIRC it takes a few hours to compile it. It's still
chewing away at RC5-DES. Michael has run one with 16MB of RAM and I've
run this particular machine in the past with 8MB, but I had the extra
30-pin sticks so I used them.

 For hard drive space it has a 200MB drive for the primary and a 500MB
for secondary:

nodens$ df
Filesystem         1024-blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda1             199483   23061   166121     12%   /
/dev/hdb5             297603  184197    98036     65%   /usr
/dev/hdb6             189783    2897   177085      2%   /home

 Counting the 24MB in swap, it's using just over 230MB total for the OS
and installed packages (which there aren't that many). It has a bare X
install on it which I've used like once, compilers, perl, and the base
system stuff plus some extras. To tell the truth, if I needed to trim it
down for size, there are a great many packages I could remove getting it
under 200MB easily. Of course, the floppy installs a couple other people
have mentioned are much more space efficient.

 It will be fine on a 486 too, you'll just need to be patient while the
kernel compiles.

-- 
   Mike Loseke    | If at first you don't succeed,
 mike at verinet.com | increase the amperage.