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#1 2008-06-25 23:29:03

hausted
Member
Registered: 2008-06-25
Posts: 2

lowmem boot image

Hi,

I've googled this, searched the wiki, and searched the forums, and I've found discussions about the lowmem boot option but never an answer to my particular question.

The beginner's guide says this:

lowmem is useful for older machines with limited RAM.

Memory requirements:
CORE ISO: lowmem boot image 64 MB RAM x86_64/i686 (all packages selected, with swap partition)
CORE ISO: arch boot image 160 MB RAM x86_64/i686 (all packages selected, with swap partition)
FTP ISO : 160 MB RAM x86_64/i686 (all packages selected, with swap partition)

I'm running a P4 with 256 MB of RAM and two 37GB hard drives. I'm keeping winXP on one of the drives for backup reasons, but I'd like to run Archlinux 99% of the time on the other drive as a web server, and I want my linux installation to hog as little system resources as possible.

My question is, does using a lowmem boot image actually create a different installation/build that uses less memory than the normal boot image? Or do they both create the exact same installation/build, just with the lowmem boot image using less memory DURING installation?

I would simply use the lowmem without even asking about it, but I hesitate because I'm not sure if the lowmem installation reduces later performance/options. What do you recommend? Thanks in advance.

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#2 2008-06-26 00:30:32

tigrmesh
IRC Op
From: Florida, US
Registered: 2007-12-11
Posts: 794

Re: lowmem boot image

You have more than 160 MB RAM, so don't even worry about it.

Welcome to Arch!

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#3 2008-06-26 01:30:53

Redroar
Member
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 200

Re: lowmem boot image

It's the latter. I believe that it loads fewer modules...I don't know what else. It may have a different install logic that goes slower but leaves less in the RAM at any given time.

But the install will be the same. Good luck with Arch, and have a good time!


Stop looking at my signature. It betrays your nature.

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#4 2008-06-26 01:48:18

hausted
Member
Registered: 2008-06-25
Posts: 2

Re: lowmem boot image

Alright cool, thanks a lot!

And yeah, I'm sure I will have a good time. Arch is pretty much what I was looking for...

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#5 2008-07-05 14:24:28

thesaint4cs
Member
Registered: 2008-07-03
Posts: 4

Re: lowmem boot image

Hm... how did you USE the lowmem option?
I can't find a  "*lowmem*.iso" in the download section and I can't find a
lowmem option in GRUB on the normal "*core*.iso" either.
And the "Beginners Guide" or Wiki don't tell me where to put this option manually...

ty for anybody able to help, thesaint4cs

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#6 2008-07-06 03:17:12

Wittfella
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-05-27
Posts: 462

Re: lowmem boot image

Hello,

lowmem is a boot option using the normal Arch install iso.  You should see some text talking about the various boot options.

It sounds like your computer is not booting from the cd (ie. you should not see grub).

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#7 2008-07-06 12:00:51

thesaint4cs
Member
Registered: 2008-07-03
Posts: 4

Re: lowmem boot image

Hm..., well I'll explain the whole situation:
I'm using VMWare on my WindowsVista emulating the "archlinux-2008.06-core-i686.iso" as CD-Rom.
I can install and then use (i.e. I can at least login after installing) Archlinux as long as I provide VMWare with enough Memory.
It of course crashes while installing packages when I only provide for example 128MB RAM due to the lack of activated lowmem option.

Now, where to find this lowmem option?
The first picture after the "Time to hit F2"-screen is the blue GNU-Grub screen:
arch1.jpg

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#8 2008-07-06 14:38:29

bgc1954
Member
From: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Registered: 2006-03-14
Posts: 1,160

Re: lowmem boot image

If I'm not mistaken you will probably need to edit the first line in the grub entry screen "Boot Archlive".  Hit the "e" key to edit and add lowmem to the end of the line and then hit "Enter" key.  Then hit the "b" key to boot.  In the older install cd's--or maybe it's still on the ftp install cd images--the first screen mentions the lowmem boot option.  If you look at the second grub entry "ide-legacy" the ide-legacy is added to the end of the grub boot so I'm assuming the lowmem addition will give you that.


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

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#9 2008-07-06 16:58:11

neotuli
Lazy Developer
From: London, UK
Registered: 2004-07-06
Posts: 1,204
Website

Re: lowmem boot image

Uhm... there is no lowmem option anymore. The live system has the same memory requirements as a running arch system.


The suggestion box only accepts patches.

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#10 2008-07-06 17:44:50

thesaint4cs
Member
Registered: 2008-07-03
Posts: 4

Re: lowmem boot image

Thanks so far for your answers!

@bgc1954
I already tried that^^ It crashes anyway during installation.

@neotuli
Does that mean there's no way to install Archlinux on a 128MB Machine?
If so, is there another Linux distribution that CAN be installed there?

Last edited by thesaint4cs (2008-07-06 17:45:21)

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#11 2008-07-06 17:44:57

bgc1954
Member
From: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Registered: 2006-03-14
Posts: 1,160

Re: lowmem boot image

So what is a person to do if they need the lowmem option??  Use an older .iso image??  Any plans to include that option again or is arch giving up on older hardware installations?


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

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#12 2008-07-06 18:44:32

dmartins
Member
Registered: 2006-09-23
Posts: 360

Re: lowmem boot image

You could try using a lightweight system rescue boot disk like tomsrtbt on a floppy to create a swap partition. After you've made the swap partition, cross your fingers and hope the Arch CD will even boot on 128MB of ram. If it does, run swapon /dev/sdXY before starting the installation.

For memory challenged systems, slackware seems like a good option. I recently managed a working base install of slackware 10.2 on a pentium 133 laptop with 64MB of ram. I haven't added any useful apps yet, but at least it was installable! smile I would have liked to give Arch a try but unfortunately, a pentium is only a i586. I am still kicking around the idea of compliling everything for 586 using my desktop and ABS.

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#13 2008-07-06 19:52:07

thesaint4cs
Member
Registered: 2008-07-03
Posts: 4

Re: lowmem boot image

Thank you all so much smile
I finally made it with Archlinux - I got an older version of it (at least I was able to install it). It has still to proof that it works well^^
Thx to dmartins, too - If the older version does not fit after some tests I'll consider both options.

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#14 2008-07-07 15:55:18

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: lowmem boot image

thesaint4cs wrote:

@neotuli
Does that mean there's no way to install Archlinux on a 128MB Machine?
If so, is there another Linux distribution that CAN be installed there?

I don't think I understand. A running system, for me, takes approximately 30-something megs of ram. I don't know what issues you're running into, but you should be fine. Maybe you want to remove the ramdisk boot param (hit 'e' on the 'Boot Archlive' line)

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#15 2008-07-07 16:54:49

bgc1954
Member
From: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Registered: 2006-03-14
Posts: 1,160

Re: lowmem boot image

phrakture wrote:

I don't think I understand. A running system, for me, takes approximately 30-something megs of ram. I don't know what issues you're running into, but you should be fine. Maybe you want to remove the ramdisk boot param (hit 'e' on the 'Boot Archlive' line)

I was trying to install Debian *cough, cough* on my mom's old 533 celeron emachine the other day and I kept getting a kernel panic no matter what boot option I tried.  I happened to have an arch disk with me so I decided to try that and with a normal boot got the same kernel panic probs.  The thing that saved me was the lomem option mentioned on the first screen of that 2007.8 iso I used.  I'm not totally sure what the lomem option did but it allowed me to do an install on her machine using arch.  If removing the ramdisk option in the boot will do the same thing, now I know, but it was nice that the old arch install disk gave me an option to try before I had to do a bunch of research or switch to some so-called light-weight distro.


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

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#16 2008-07-07 17:37:55

Misfit138
Misfit Emeritus
From: USA
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 4,189

Re: lowmem boot image

bgc1954 wrote:

phrakture wrote:

I don't think I understand. A running system, for me, takes approximately 30-something megs of ram. I don't know what issues you're running into, but you should be fine. Maybe you want to remove the ramdisk boot param (hit 'e' on the 'Boot Archlive' line)

I was trying to install Debian *cough, cough* on my mom's old 533 celeron emachine the other day and I kept getting a kernel panic no matter what boot option I tried.  I happened to have an arch disk with me so I decided to try that and with a normal boot got the same kernel panic probs.  The thing that saved me was the lomem option mentioned on the first screen of that 2007.8 iso I used.  I'm not totally sure what the lomem option did but it allowed me to do an install on her machine using arch.  If removing the ramdisk option in the boot will do the same thing, now I know, but it was nice that the old arch install disk gave me an option to try before I had to do a bunch of research or switch to some so-called light-weight distro.

bgc1954, if you are able to, please experiment with removing the ramdisk option. If it works, I will add it to the Beginner's Guide.

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#17 2008-07-07 22:14:45

bgc1954
Member
From: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Registered: 2006-03-14
Posts: 1,160

Re: lowmem boot image

Misfit138 wrote:

bgc1954, if you are able to, please experiment with removing the ramdisk option. If it works, I will add it to the Beginner's Guide.

I don't know if I really want to experiment on mom's computer now that I've got it set up like she wants, but I do have an old Intel 350 Mhz in my basement that I can pull some memory out of and try an install with 64MB or so and see if I can duplicate the same problems I had on her machine and try the no ramdisk boot.  Give me a couple of days or so and I'll let you know the outcome.


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

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#18 2008-07-07 23:03:40

Misfit138
Misfit Emeritus
From: USA
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 4,189

Re: lowmem boot image

Beautiful! Thank you!
I have always wanted to try exactly what you are proposing, but have never had the means. (Because I can't get a straight answer out of Neotuli concerning minimum system specs tongue )

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#19 2008-07-08 20:47:06

bgc1954
Member
From: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Registered: 2006-03-14
Posts: 1,160

Re: lowmem boot image

Well, I had some time to kill this AM and the news is not all good.  I tried removing the ramdisk from the boot and installing on an old intel 350 Mhz with both 64MB and then 128 MB RAM and neither would do an install.

It seemed to boot fine and the install would progress fine until it tried to install the packages.  I did a simple base install and it would spit out a warning about not being able to create the pacman cache and would use /tmp and then would run out of space and not install anything.

I thought maybe the archlive 2008.6 core.iso disk was no good but tried it on my main computer amd64 with 500 mb RAM on a spare partition and the install said the same thing about no pacman cache created and using /tmp but the install proceeded fine.

I then used the disk that I installed on my mom's computer and used the lowmem boot on the intel 350 with 64 mb RAM and it installed fine.  I am using the old clunker right now to do this post.  Just for sh*** and giggles I also tried a lowmem boot install with 32 mb RAM but that did the old kernel panic thing so I'm not sure how phrakture is able to get a machine running with 30 mb or so.  Must be voodoo magic.

So, to me, it looks like the new archlive iso's don't seem to install on old hardware even with 128 mb RAM.  I hope that's not what the devs intended but on this machine anyway the new archlive core install disk isn't worth the cd it's burned on.

So whats the next step??  Can a lowmem option be added like the ide-legacy option??  Or is something so different with the new archlive install that the minimum specs have changed--don't know why it wouldn't even install with 128 mb RAM, on this machine anyway.  And the deletion of the ramdisk in the grub boot didn't help in any case.


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

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#20 2008-07-08 22:39:06

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: lowmem boot image

Well, let me get technical for a second.

The old ISOs dumped everything into one giant initial ramdisk. This means that the entire system was mounted/expanded into RAM on boot. The 'lowmem' image just had less stuff installed. That is all.

The newer ISOs try to run off of the CDROM as much as possible, but also give those with more RAM the option to copy things to ram, AND it uses a ramdisk for the RW portion of a unionfs.

Instead of removing the ramdisk option, drop the percentage down a bit. The default is 75% IIRC, maybe try 20% or so?

Additionally, reading the previous post, I noticed an issue that low RAM systems are going to run into, but it'd need to be fixed at the pacman side. If the RW portion of the root filesystem is in RAM (or is uses /tmp), then all downloaded packages are going to be saved in RAM as you install. What we'd need here, is some ability for pacman to delete the downloaded packages after each one is installed.
I guess we could setup some option in the installer to install packages one-by-one, then pacman -Scc after each run. It's messy, and slow, but it'd save on RAM for older systems.

So, the issue is not so much the minimum specs, really, it's just that more things seem to be using RAM when installing. Now that I think about it, the old ISO would have had the same issue, so I have no idea how this doesn't show up there was well.

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#21 2008-07-09 14:58:30

bgc1954
Member
From: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Registered: 2006-03-14
Posts: 1,160

Re: lowmem boot image

phrakture wrote:

Instead of removing the ramdisk option, drop the percentage down a bit. The default is 75% IIRC, maybe try 20% or so?

I tried that and even went to 5% but no joy.  With the older 2007.08 core disk, it seems like the installer saves the packages onto your hard drive and then removes them after--unless you tell it to keep them.  With the new archlive install, everything is done from RAM so how can a challenged 128 mb or even worse a 64 mb RAM system be expected to hold the packages for even a minimum install unless like you mentioned each package were deleted before the next is installed?  Sounds messy to me.  I guess the trick is to find out how the older arch install managed to work on the 64 mb RAM machine when the install even says that you require 96 mb.

Or, just a thought, maybe a separate .iso using the old install system for people who can't use the new archlive .iso--Ubuntu has both a livecd and custom install cd for those who want more control over their install.


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

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#22 2008-07-09 15:25:00

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: lowmem boot image

Yeah, we're looking at this now - not caching to the host system is the main issue. It's an oops, and I think we can fix that and get a new iso out sometime soon.

I do need to point out though, that except for the package cache thing, the old ISOs used far more ram on boot. I think the lowmem images booted with 60+ megs in use. Last I checked, archlive was using 30+ megs.

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#23 2008-07-09 15:39:52

bgc1954
Member
From: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Registered: 2006-03-14
Posts: 1,160

Re: lowmem boot image

Sounds great. big_smile  When you get something that you think works, I can try it out on the old clunker if you like.


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

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#24 2008-08-09 09:56:36

rooloo
Member
Registered: 2008-07-09
Posts: 218

Re: lowmem boot image

any update? I got a bruiser of a laptop. 233mhz 96mb ram that chokes with win 98.

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#25 2008-09-15 23:52:16

longhornxtreme
Member
Registered: 2004-07-10
Posts: 131

Re: lowmem boot image

It definitely is a problem. On my 933mhz PIII with 128MB, I can't get past the install packages step on the latest install disc. I'm about to try turning the swap on before package install to see if that helps. This is annoying as I'm only re-installing Arch after a HDD failure.

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