How to tell if I have enough RAM to run Puppy?

Booting, installing, newbie
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cretsiah
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat 24 May 2008, 15:28

#16 Post by cretsiah »

OK so based on a whirlppol forum I read,

upgrading the ram could be a major hassle, it has to be very specific ram module
PC2-4200 CL4

as for the graphics lol
ATI Xpress 200M (64megs max) Shared

will attempt to look at:
- 2.14X (Classic)- tuxxx's revamp of 2.14 if i understand correctly
- Dpup-stretch

although I think youtube might be out of the question with only 64megs for graphics.

will let you know in a day or 2 if I can get either of these up and running.

it would be nice to salvage this laptop even if its only for trouble shooting other computers/ hard drives or practicing linux commands, its a nice solid case unlike all this new junk that practically bends in your hands when you pick it up.

cretsiah
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat 24 May 2008, 15:28

Satelite L30 883megs usable ram + 64meg shared graphics

#17 Post by cretsiah »

ok so i forgot to mention

wolfpup 1.01 (was able to use this to do gparted on the fluxbuntu partition i made) was on this disc also.

fluxbuntu

Puppy3.01 doesnt allow for pfix options (aka goes straight into detecting stuff)

FireHydrant Retro 3.01 has low enough spec requirements to boot but has no pfix options (aka goes straight into detecting stuff).

Should ask if Dpup- Stretch7.5 is a uefi or persistant disc image only or is it like the older closed discs (such as 2.14R)

this will make a difference as to whether i need to format another usb or not.

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bigpup
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#18 Post by bigpup »

given the low ram 883megs Im figuring its definetly a 32-bit system.
883 MB RAM is enough RAM to run any Puppy version.
All it will do is limit how many programs you can be using at one time. How many active tabs you can have open in a web browser and what the web site is trying to do.
Example:
Bionicpup64 8.0 with only Pale Moon browser open with two tabs active.
Actual Used RAM: 314 MB

RAM has nothing to do with 32bit or 64bit support.
The processor has to be 64bit capable to run a 64bit Puppy version.
Any processor can run 32bit.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

foxpup
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Re: Satelite L30 883megs usable ram + 64meg shared graphics

#19 Post by foxpup »

cretsiah wrote:Should ask if Dpup- Stretch7.5 is a uefi or persistant disc image only or is it like the older closed discs (such as 2.14R)

this will make a difference as to whether i need to format another usb or not.
Not sure I understand correctly.

All Puppys can do a legacy boot, mbr and grub4dos.
All newer Puppys, since Slacko6.3.2 can also do UEFI boot.

You can do frugal install of many Puppys together on 1 pendrive.
Read this thread through:Puppy Linux legacy boot EASY

For persistence you accept the offer to make a pupsave on first shutdown.
Newer Puppys offer the choice between a file (.fs) or a map on a linux partition (ext2/3/4).
If you can, go for the map.
So format your pendrive ext2/3/4, or at least part of it.
Or you can put the pupsave on a linux partition on the hard disc.
Many possibilities here.

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mikeb
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#20 Post by mikeb »

although I think youtube might be out of the question with only 64megs for graphics.
This in itself does not affect you tube playability...

Mike

enrique
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Location: Planet Earth

#21 Post by enrique »

I want to be clear, as some post including mine may confuse you. bigpup is correct.
bigpup wrote:883 MB RAM is enough RAM to run any Puppy version
And I did not test but I am pretty sure that you should be able to stream youtube in LOW Quality without any issue using lets say frienly TUI "youtube-viewer".

And I prove it that Mike Walsh portable palemoon can even let you do basic Social Media if you accept the very slow response, one tab at a time and watch your CPU load/temp. As soon as CPU get hot it will start throttling the speed.

But you need to not forget to add a swap partition.

So I seen most users here claim Dpup- Stretch7.5 is the way to go. Try that Dpup- Stretch7.5 and the portable browsers. Nothing better than your own test. Do not forget to have an extra swap partition of at least 1.6 GB. We will be waiting your response.

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Mike Walsh
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#22 Post by Mike Walsh »

cretsiah wrote:<snip>....as for the graphics :lol:
ATI Xpress 200M (64megs max) Shared....</snip>
@ cretsiah:-

Nowt wrong with that chip. I had the same one in my old Compaq tower that died just after Xmas this year; as reliable as they come, and gave a very good picture. The Phoenix 'Award' BIOS it came with would allow you to assign up to 128 MB of shared RAM, but then I did have 3 GB in the old girl.....

However, as Mikeb has said, this doesn't affect YouTube playability. My ancient Dell laptop, with a P4, 1.5 GB DDR1 & the Intel 'Extreme Graphics' chip, only has a maximum of 8 MB available to it, even after a BIOS upgrade.....and it can still play vids & YT quite acceptably, so long as you don't attempt silly resolutions.

Experiment, that's all I can say. There'll be a solution out there somewhere; trial and error will find it, sooner or later..! :D


Mike. :wink:

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Moose On The Loose
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#23 Post by Moose On The Loose »

In the area of how much RAM I made a change in my own personal version of 528 to make it work on my EEEPC-701. The init now has:

Code: Select all

 # Making required RAM size greater than 512K needed for copy
 # This is for a test
 # [ "$COPYCONTENDER" = "yes" ] && [ $RAMSIZE -gt 220000 ] && [ $RAMSIZE -gt $MINRAM2CPY ] && COPY2RAM="yes"
 [ "$COPYCONTENDER" = "yes" ] && [ $RAMSIZE -gt 620000 ] && [ $RAMSIZE -gt $MINRAM2CPY ] && COPY2RAM="yes"
Without this, Seamonkey would crash for lack of memory on trying to go into youtube. With it, I can watch a youtube video even on that very limited machine.
[/code]

enrique
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Location: Planet Earth

#24 Post by enrique »

Moose On The Loose wrote:... [ $RAMSIZE -gt 620000 ] ...
Wao we are now on initrd code. 1rs wonder what code we have today in woofce.

1) But in any case did we have or not a boot code option that reads "pfix=noram" & "pfix=ram" for that?

2) If cretsiah in fact have 702 mb RAM that is aprox 736100. 736100 is bigger than 620000. I guess in your case 512MB or "536870" was smaller than 620000.

To be honest this is way out of my head as we will have to study what is in the initrd of Puppy he is using.

Now Moose On The Loose I thank you for the remind. As I see my self doing 2 more test. One with Dpup- Stretch7.5 & another using my Lupu528 and pfix=noram, to allow maximum ram for the browser. Still I think sites like youtube in fact overwhelm the CPU with the java/html5 script. It is to much work for a single core 32bit 1.X GZ CPU.

cretsiah
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#25 Post by cretsiah »

ok so I got

Puppy 2.14X running from HHD (after booting CD). only minor issue is need to press function key to use right hand side of keyboard using us keyboard layout

but Dpup-stretch 7.5 (july one forum thread) gives me hell this is with normal cd boot and using pfix=nocopy
errors:
- vmalloc_lock_slowpath +0*5a/0*d0
- kthread +0*94/0*b0
- kthread_worker (cant remeber string)
- bad_area_nosemaphore +0*f/0*20

those are the ones i bothered to write down
plus about 5 lines of code

Code: c3 8d 74 26 00 64 a1 10 f7 c3 c1 8b 80 7c 02 00 00 blah blah blah

have no idea what this all means, maybe you do.

cretsiah
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#26 Post by cretsiah »

Fair bit of manual stuffing around BBUUTTT

currently able to boot

- Puppy 2.14R
- Puppy 2.14X (has right hand side keyboard issues because of function key)
- FireHydrant 3.01 Retro
- Puppy 431
- Puduan 6 wmx alpha 1 (but french throws me off because i dont speak it)
- Puduan 7 a1-r5495 ( i think thats the right number)
- Slacko 6.3.2 (32-bit)

If you want a copy of the menu.lst I will try to post that tomorrow

havent tested the net connection on any except 1 (puppy2.14X) with an ethernet cable there is no wifi on this machine.
Last edited by cretsiah on Sun 07 Jun 2020, 13:50, edited 1 time in total.

enrique
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#27 Post by enrique »

cretsiah
Never give up. There are PC that have a bad aptitude. ;) Is a mater of finding the proper kernel setup. But it is easier to keep trying different Puppy's until you get close to what you need.

Dpup-stretch 7.5 is been advertise to very nice on old PC. Now I can only say just make sure it is 32bit and and read NONEPAE or does not have the PAE in title. Hooping some one jump and tell you a direct link Dpup-stretch 7.5

I never try Puppy 2.14X I will find it too. But 2.14 suggest a very old one. Better trying 4, 5 series. My very 1rst Puppy was Lupu528 and it does really nice on my old Satellite A45.

EDit: Upss seems you posted again before me.

cretsiah
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Joined: Sat 24 May 2008, 15:28

#28 Post by cretsiah »

@enrique I tried to put 2.17.1_seamonkey on there but it had a hissy fit about drive to large or something lol

the Dpup-stretch was the 32-bit option (at least as i understood it) but it just went absolutely haywire.

Im gonna look at this

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=116116

cos i have some ideas but i would be jumping in the deep end without a clue lol

foxpup
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#29 Post by foxpup »

very nice cretsiah!

Ethernet should always be good.

If you are still interested in dPupStretch from radky, it is here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=112125
Take the 4.1.48 kernel and you may need the fdrv, or not.

But I agree with enrique, try until you find something to your liking.
Puppy is a universe.

Slacko6.3.2 is already a fairly modern Puppy and if it runs well, it is very solid.
You may be surprised how recent a Puppy you still can use on this machine.

Just one thing good to know: does the CPU support SSE2, maybe only SSE?
Look in /proc/cpuinfo. It should be in the flags line.
There are a lot of programs that want SSE2 :-(

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Moose On The Loose
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#30 Post by Moose On The Loose »

enrique wrote:
Moose On The Loose wrote:... [ $RAMSIZE -gt 620000 ] ...
Wao we are now on initrd code. 1rs wonder what code we have today in woofce.

1) But in any case did we have or not a boot code option that reads "pfix=noram" & "pfix=ram" for that?
Yes, but that means it has to be done manually. I run the same thing on multiple machines and want it to not need custom interactions to work on each.
2) If cretsiah in fact have 702 mb RAM that is aprox 736100. 736100 is bigger than 620000. I guess in your case 512MB or "536870" was smaller than 620000.
I don't have the option of randomly varying the amount of RAM so I went with just changing the 1st digit as the 1st step of my experiment and then stopped there. I needed to test to see that seamonkey would work.
Still I think sites like youtube in fact overwhelm the CPU with the java/html5 script. It is to much work for a single core 32bit 1.X GZ CPU.
I have thought of making the script for the web browser pop up a dialog saying

"This is going to be SLOW and seamonkey may complain about a script not finishing quickly. Get your self a nice cup of coffee, perhaps a good book to read and tell it to continue when it says that"

enrique
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Joined: Sun 10 Nov 2019, 00:10
Location: Planet Earth

#31 Post by enrique »

cretsiah

As you see we are here to help. I see you have a list currently able to boot. Nice. Now all will depend on what is the use you will give to your PC. If you are going to do some Browsing on Social/Multimedia you may need to stay on the more or less recent Puppys. To old and to little you can do.

Regards hardware. See if you use a very old Puppy then you need to follow rules of that time. Yes USB had to be small I guess not bigger than 16GB. Well for sure no 32GB. I do not recall clear but in the beginning I think 4GB was the limit!!. And you may not use any of the recent format. So try to stick to FAT32 and EXT2 only on very old.

Normally I give this next script for people with hardware problems. But Since we are here to learn. Download the attached script. Untar using Uextract or similar. You run it by ./enrique_systeminfo.sh It will create systeminfo-report.txt and a tar and more smaller systeminfo-report.txt.tar.xz.tar.

There you will find ALL sort of information of your Machine. Open in Geany and serach for:

uname -a => Kernel information
PROC DEVICES => CPU
/proc/meminfo => Memory

etc etc.


enrique_systeminfo.sh.tar

cretsiah
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat 24 May 2008, 15:28

Dpup_Stretch_7.5 Slacko_6.3.2

#32 Post by cretsiah »

OK so could get

DPup Stretch 7.5 July 2019 booted up (sort of frugal)

with these files un the folder

- vmlinuz
- initrd.gz
- splash.png
- windows installer
- Help
- vesamenu.32
- adrv_stretch_7.5.sfs
- fdrv_stretch_7.5.sfs
- puppy_stretch_7.5.sfs

(may need to add the lib firmware from gyro (linux_firmware_20200531.sfs)
will do that after this post to see if it fixes the muted volume control which i cant unmute.

HOWEVER

in having done this Slacko 6.3.2 now has the previous DPup_Stretch errors listed earlier.
so now Slacko_6.3.2 is not bootable

Im hoping this will help the building team of these.

foxpup
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Joined: Fri 29 Jul 2016, 21:08

Re: Dpup_Stretch_7.5 Slacko_6.3.2

#33 Post by foxpup »

cretsiah wrote:HOWEVER

in having done this Slacko 6.3.2 now has the previous DPup_Stretch errors listed earlier.
so now Slacko_6.3.2 is not bootable

Im hoping this will help the building team of these.
I hope this is not a problem with failing RAM.

cretsiah
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat 24 May 2008, 15:28

#34 Post by cretsiah »

@foxpup

Could be the original SATA Drive had failed (160gig sata spindal based drive)
it is pretty old
temp reading in a couple of the puppies (cant remember which ones sorry) are saying 53 degrees at idle.

if you want some real fun

this is how I got them on there

- using puppy 2.14R or 2.14X transfered files into indivual files on hard drive.

- adding a somewhat convoluted kernel / pmedia thingy (think this came from ttuuxxx's 2.14X

hhd is formatted with ext3, and has a 2.5gig swap

I have posted links at Slacko and Dpup-Stretch to look at this thread

cretsiah
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat 24 May 2008, 15:28

Menu.lst used from 2.14X for Toshiba L30

#35 Post by cretsiah »

# GRUB configuration file '/boot/grub/menu.lst'.
# generated by 'grubconfig'. Sun Jun 7 11:43:54 2020
#
# The backup copy of the MBR for drive '/dev/sda' is
# here '/boot/grub/mbr.sda.4824'. You can restore it like this.
# dd if=mbr.sda.4824 of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

# Start GRUB global section
timeout 30
#color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
# End GRUB global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
title Linux on (/dev/sda1)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 ro vga=normal
#
title Puppy_Linux_214X_Frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /puppy214X/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=puppy214X
initrd /puppy214X/initrd.gz
#
title Puppy_Linux_FireHydrant_301_Retro
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /FireHydrant_301_Retro/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=FireHydrant_301_Retro
initrd /FireHydrant_301_Retro/initrd.gz
#
title Puppy_Linux_214R_Frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /puppy214R/vmlinuz2.14r root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=puppy214R
initrd /puppy214R/initrd.gz2.14r
#
#
title Puppy_Linux_puppy_2.17.1_nolzma_seamonkey_Frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /puppy_2.17.1_nolzma_seamonkey/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=puppy_2.17.1_nolzma_seamonkey
initrd /puppy_2.17.1_nolzma_seamonkey/initrd.gz
#
title Puppy_Linux_Puduan_6_wmx_Alpha_1
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /Puduan_6_wmx_Alpha_1/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=Puduan_6_wmx_Alpha_1
initrd /Puduan_6_wmx_Alpha_1/initrd.gz
#
title Puppy_Linux_Puduan_7_a1_r5495
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /Puduan_7_a1_r5495/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=Puduan_7_a1_r5495
initrd /Puduan_7_a1_r5495/initrd.gz
#
title Puppy_Linux_Puppy_431
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /Puppy_431/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=Puppy_431
initrd /Puppy_431/initrd.gz
#
title Puppy_Linux_Slacko_6.3.2
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /Slacko_6.3.2/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=Slacko_6.3.2
initrd /Slacko_6.3.2/initrd.gz
#
#
title Puppy_Linux_DPup_Stretch_7.5_July_2019
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /DPup_Stretch_7.5_July_2019/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=satahd psubdir=DPup_Stretch_7.5_July_2019
initrd /DPup_Stretch_7.5_July_2019/initrd.gz
#
# Linux bootable partition config ends
title --- For help press 'c', then type: 'help'
root (hd0)
title --- For usage examples, type: 'cat /boot/grub/grub.txt'
root (hd0)

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