Puppy won't boot: too little RAM?

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chris999998 · #1 Post by **chris999998** » Sat 14 Jan 2006, 17:10

I'm relatively new to linux, so please excuse the many shortfalls in my knowledge.

I'm trying to boot Puppy on an old pentium 90MHz machine, I believe it only has 16MB of RAM.

I've burnt the ISO to CD, and, as the PC wouldn't boot straight from the drive, I've made a WakePup floppy, and although it sees the CD correctly, the boot hangs after saying:

Freeing unused kernel memory: 132K freed
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

I tried adding init=3 to one of the config files and selecting that option, as suggested by an answer to a similar problem which I found using google. This hasn't made a difference.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

#2 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sat 14 Jan 2006, 17:37

I don't know much about low ram Puppy, but I do know the reccomendation is 128 MB. I also know it has been used with only 32 MB. I don't think it's possible to run the standard Puppy with 16 MB. If you removed all the X stuff, it might work, but you'd only have the consol (still a powerful tool).

Since Puppy runs entirely in ram, it tends to need a decent bit. In this case, it might be better to find one of those "low-ram" linuxes that only need 8MB or so.

chris999998 · #3 Post by **chris999998** » Sat 14 Jan 2006, 17:49

Ok,

my plan was to create a swap file on hard disk, could I set this up from Windows and then tell puppy to use it to boot with?

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/SwapFile details how to set it up from within puppy, could I put some variation of this into the booting config so that this is set up from boot and puppy runs from inside the swap file?

Thanks for the quick reply,

Chris

#4 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sat 14 Jan 2006, 18:20

Probably, but I've never messed with swap, so you'll have to wait for someone with more experience to come by. In the meantime, you could look through the forum and see if you can find a similar problem that was solved. I know there have been a lot of posts about swap before.

chris999998 · #5 Post by **chris999998** » Sat 14 Jan 2006, 18:36

Ok, I'll have another look, I spent a while searching with the kernel panic error, but couldn't see anything relevant. I'll have a look through some of the swap stuff.

Thanks,

Chris

kethd · #6 Post by **kethd** » Sat 14 Jan 2006, 19:21

I have been researching Puppy in your kind of situation. (Which you can learn a lot about from my other Forum posts.)

The bottom line is, this is a bad way for you to get to know Linux, and a bad way to get to know Puppy -- you will have endless problems.

If you really want to learn Linux, on such limited hardware, I suggest a more limited distro targeted at that niche, perhaps even a command-line oriented floppy-based version.

It is great to learn about running Puppy on computers like yours -- *IF* you also have access to better computers, so you can compare and learn exactly what the limitations are on the older equipment.

Your best performance, with such a slow computer and such limited ram, will be with a true-Linux HDoption-2 type install in a real Linux partition. That is really the only practical way to run with less than 32MB.

It is possible that if you set up swap space that you could boot the LiveCD with less than 32MB. Maybe. Performance is likely to be horrible, but perhaps adequate for accomplishing certain tasks.

Lobster · #7 Post by **Lobster** » Sat 14 Jan 2006, 21:15

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?p=24316#24316

That Blueflops - I tried it and thought it good - might suit you.
DSL (Damn Small Linux) claim to run in such limited circumstances but the 'Run' includes two minutes to open applications but you may like to try

http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/

Also think about Freedos and menuet

chris999998 · #8 Post by **chris999998** » Sun 15 Jan 2006, 01:00

Ok, thanks for all the help.

I was hoping that throwing myself in at the deepend like this would help me get orientated in Linux quickly, turns out this PC actually has 24MB of RAM, however, I will probably attempt a type 2 hard disk install as suggested above.

Thanks again,

Chris

Sage · #9 Post by **Sage** » Sun 15 Jan 2006, 11:32

We discussed all this (Search). ket is a little too pessimistic, 24Mb will do. Use DOS to fdisk one partition of at least 500Mb and another of at least 50Mb. DO NOT format either. Use Type2 install, format the small partition as swap, edit it into rc.local0 and Bob's your thingy, etc ......
Works for me every time. Not unbearably slow, but 32Mb of main memory would be better. Maybe stick to v1.0.6, ie without xorg?

Lobster · #10 Post by **Lobster** » Sun 15 Jan 2006, 11:52

Some great advice guys

If possible see if you can beg, borrow or aquire legally a graphic acelarator (oh I can not spell it) card - I doubt very much if your machine has one built in - but if it does it could be using part of the ram. A slow machine with fast graphics (remember that is screen redraw and scrolling etc too) can make a great deal of difference on an old machine. Also ram . . . if you can get it can be dirt cheap what is the type and max you can use? Where are you maybe I can send you some? Not sure what I have available . . .

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/VersionsPuppy

Version 1.0.2
Download Puppy Linux 1.0.2 standard release∞ - This release uses kernel 2.6 and may run up to 30% faster on some systems. Note: This version had issues with NTFS partition corruption. If you are running Windows XP using the NTFS filesystem, it is recommended that you use upgrade to latest Puppy version, to avoid this problem. (61MB)

I would also consider Mean Puppy
and Pizzasgood is developing emptycrust Puppy this weekend

There has been talk of a console only Puppy (we have the programs and technology but no one has done it yet

- Keep in touch
- let us get that Puppy running . . .

Sage · #11 Post by **Sage** » Sun 15 Jan 2006, 12:46

Ditto - may be able to help out with old memory.
Need to know 30 or 68/72 pin and number of slots.
It's a bit like foot-shooting, not letting us know exactly where you are! Maybe John could make this mandatory. It tells when correspondents are likely to be online (oh yes, the world doesn't stop at NYC!) for speed of response (&VOIP!) and whether more detailed assistance can be offered/received via landline phone or packages sent by post.

#12 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sun 15 Jan 2006, 16:39

A slow machine with fast graphics (remember that is screen redraw and scrolling etc too) can make a great deal of difference on an old machine.

When I installed my 64 megabyte graphics card in my computer (450MHz, 256MB RAM) in Windows, the whole thing sped way up. And not just games. Everything. From Windows Explorer to the menu-bar. I actually had to slow down some things.
I hadn't really started using linux at that point, so I don't know if simply installing the card did anything, because I have nothing to compare it to. But when I put in the drivers recently, I did notice an increase in the graphics stuff.

Ian · #13 Post by **Ian** » Wed 18 Jan 2006, 23:53

If you have a floppy drive that works you could try downloading Tomsrtbt from:

http://www.toms.net

follow the instructions to copy it to a floppy then boot your machine from the floppy.

You can then partition your hard drive using fdisk and format the partitions using mke2fs for a native Linux file system and mkswap for a swap partition.

If you have a Linux swap partition on your hard drive Puppy will recognize it and in 1.0.4 will turn it on at bootup.

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Puppy won't boot: too little RAM?

Puppy won't boot: too little RAM?

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