I have a Live CD that I was hoping to get installed on an old Pentium4 PC with 40 Gigabobs of hard drive and 512 MB of RAM. Unfortunately after it had finished all the automatic checks that it does before installation a message came up saying that to install from a LiveCD requires more than 1 Gigabob of RAM and therefore installation may fail.
I tried it anyway just in case and sure enough the installation failed. The checksums on the LiveCD are all correct so there is nothing wrong with the LiveCD.
I have installed various Linux OS on all kinds of ancient PCs without ever needing such a large amount of RAM to install. Why does OpenSUSE 11.2 require 1 Gigabob of RAM?
Does it require it as a system prerequisite to boot and run, or is this 1 Gigabob minimum just required to run the LiveCD installation programme? Is there a different way to install that doesn’t need so much RAM?
I have installed various Ubuntu based operating systems on PCs and netbooks with much less RAM than 1 Gigabob, so why does OpenSUSE need such a high amount of RAM?
It’s because you installed from the LiveCD session, which means both a live desktop and the installer are competing for memory. If you go straight into the install from the spash screen without starting a desktop session you should be able to do it with less memory.
Well the term is gigabyte, but anyhow some linux distros are tetchy on live CD’s and openSUSE is no exception.
In fact openSUSE’s live CD for the most part… well sucks, I mean yes its easy to navigate but for older hardware it runs like a snail.
My suggestion is to forget the live CD and go for the DVD installer, it needs less memory and installs more then the live… that is if you have a DVD burner.
If you dont, well just forget it.
If Ubuntu is working for you, stick with it.
Personally I have nothing against ubuntu and those who use it, heck I still use it on the side.
The urge to try something new is understandable though, may I suggest Mandriva or Fedora to you?
Give them a shot, heck give any distro a shot.
Just keep in mind some are better then others.
Unfortunately Ubuntu wasn’t working for me, there were a few issues with it that resulted in me seeking and finding OpenSUSE.
The DVD install that is suggested - I tried to download the .iso fil for the DVD Install but unfortunately it was massive and the download kept failing. I also had problems working out how to transfer a 4.2 Gigabob file from my Mac onto a PC when FAT32 will only take files up to 4 Gigabob and the Mac won’t write to an NTFS File System. A small thing that was poorly thought out by the folks who designed the DVD install .iso file I think. Keeping the size below 4 Gigabobs would have been best for everyone.
Well the DVD size is within reason if you know what goes onto it, and trust me its tons of junk.
As for your drive issue, yeesh I feel your pain, fat32 is a pain to work with when NTFS is not an option.
I thought OSX did have a tool for writing to NTFS though.
But now seeing you use a Mac does complicate things a little as Macs dont take to linux that well, even openSUSE falls short in some areas…
Is this a power PC mac?
If so then there is not too many options for you, power PC is dead and there is not much that supports it anymore.
Sorry, the fault lies with Windows filesystems like FAT which imposes unreasonable limits on filesystem and file sizes. The world has moved on since. Remember the famous 640kB should be enough for everybody remark?
There are lots of ways you could have got around the problem. You could have written the DVD on the Mac if it had a burner. If only the Windows machine had a burner you could have booted with a Linux CD like Puppy which has a burner program and has no problems dealing with NTFS. You could have purchased a openSUSE DVD from a distro distributor. You could have asked a friend, or a Linux club member, to burn a DVD for you. You could have booted from the netinstall CD and installed over the LAN or Internet.
And of course, you can use the LiveCD in install mode.
I have seen the 1 GB warning, but ignored it and things worked.
A RAM size of 1 GByte is NOT needed for openSUSE 11.2. I used the NET install
CD to install 11.2 on a computer that I have with 384 MB RAM. OpenSUSE works
very well with very little swapping. Note: Windows XP on this machine is barely
usable - Linux with KDE is positively snappy.
Installation on small memory machines is easier if you use some kind of live
system to create and format a swap partition. That way the installation can use
it if necessary.
MissVictoria wrote:
> I have a Live CD that I was hoping to get installed on an old Pentium4
> PC with 40 Gigabobs of hard drive and 512 MB of RAM. Unfortunately after
> it had finished all the automatic checks that it does before
> installation a message came up saying that to install from a LiveCD
> requires more than 1 Gigabob of RAM and therefore installation may fail.
you got off track Miss, re-read the first posting by ken_yap [for now
ignore all others, they have ZERO bearing on your problem]…
just try booting from the Live CD and do NOT go to a live session,
instead, at the first green screen select Install…
that way you don’t have a live session AND the graphic installer
competing for the same RAM, and it should work…
Thanks for the reply, and also to ken_yap. I did read that bit of the first post, I did that when I tried it originally but it didn’t make any difference, it still said it needed 1 Gigabob. However I will try again just to make sure.
On Mon, 2010-02-08 at 01:56 +0000, MissVictoria wrote:
> I have a Live CD that I was hoping to get installed on an old Pentium4
> PC with 40 Gigabobs of hard drive and 512 MB of RAM. Unfortunately after
> it had finished all the automatic checks that it does before
> installation a message came up saying that to install from a LiveCD
> requires more than 1 Gigabob of RAM and therefore installation may fail.
Not sure. However, I did recently install oS 11.2 on an old 32bit
PIII based system with 256M and everything went great.
So I know that oS 11.2 doesn’t need that much memory (though I think
it wants 128M… might have been that way for a few versions now).
Download the NET install CD, unplug the Mac, connect cable to old PC, boot from NET install CD, and you should be fine. It will download anything needed to get you started.
And, there’s always the text based install. If you want to try that, get back here and we’ll point that out.
[QUOTE=cjcox;2117039]On Mon, 2010-02-08 at 01:56 +0000, MissVictoria wrote:
> I have a Live CD that I was hoping to get installed on an old Pentium4
> PC with 40 Gigabobs of hard drive and 512 MB of RAM. Unfortunately after
> it had finished all the automatic checks that it does before
> installation a message came up saying that to install from a LiveCD
> requires more than 1 Gigabob of RAM and therefore installation may fail.[/UOTE]
Don’t remember if you created a swap partition or not …
Anyway 512M is enough for installing (any) Linux from live CD. However it doesn’t make too much fun to work. The problem might be somewhere else …