On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Per Jessen wrote:

Does the non-expert user really have a need to install a general purpose distro as a trimmed down light system? If so, all you have to do is deselect the GUI, and you'll have a pretty minimal system that'll easily fit in less than 1G.

But it will still have the (unneeded) MTA. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Rodney Baker said the following on 10/25/2008 10:18 AM:

Pardon me for butting in, but my understanding is that local delivery of mail is the job of the MDA (mail *delivery* agent) not the MTA (mail *transfer* agent).

Sendmail is not an MDA - it does not deliver local mail to a user's mailbox. It is designed to transfer mail between hosts. Local delivery is the job of something like procmail.

*sigh* I wish it were as simple and well partitioned as that! Postfix, as well as the old sendmail, qmail, Smail3, ZMailer and others, is capable of local delivery as well. Having Postfix pipe ail for local delivery though procmail is very sensible and offers a great deal of per user controllability. I have my Postfix->procmail(user) on my mail hub bypass via a whitelist, and put mail in the correct folders, and run the rest through spamassassin. Along the way I have a blacklist, some of it from spamassassin, that procmail pipes back to Postfix. Some of the back-feed is to spam analysis sites and some of it simply bounces.

Postfix and Exim, as I understand, include both MTA and MDA functionality. I agree - you do need to have an MDA running to locally delivery user's mail to their mailboxes, unless the users are solely accessing an external mailserver via POP3, IMAP or the like using a client such as Kmail, Evolution etc. in which case no local MDA is needed, *unless* the user also wants to receive adminstrative emails from the local machine that are normally directed to root.

And there we get to the point of the original discussion. (From which we've diverged too much!) Given that many installed packages use mail rather than syslog ... Oh, why should they? Well mail forces delivery, syslog doesn't. ... either this is an enterprise setting with IT support to take care of configuration, in which case we wouldn't be having this discussion, or its a small home system. If the latter its either a sophisticated user such as Per, Carlos, yourself or myself, or its Joe AverageUser or his parents or grandparents. If its a sophisticated user, then we can hack things whatever way we choose, and that's not what I'm interested in or the point I'm trying to make. So Joe (or...) has this Linux, possibly form a LiveCD so he cold kick the tires without committing himself, and its really to avoid the Windows Tax. He's running a GUI, reads mail via Gmail, browses the web, downloads his camera writes a few letters, does a bit of accounting with a spreadsheet. He doesn't want to know what's "under the hood" any more than with his cell phone (which, coincidently runs an embedded version of Linux! but he doesn't know that), his fridge or his mp3 player.

My understanding of the original poster of this thread was concerned that sendmail/Postfix/Exim were dependencies that *could not be uninstalled without breaking the system to the point of unusability* - the concern was that since his machine was either stand-alone or client-only and was very limited on disk space, that these services should be able to be uninstalled (or not installed in the first place) without breaking the whole system.

Actually I can see a number of ways that the system can become brittle or perhaps eventually 'break' even if they are installed. The way my system was installed from a LiveCD (not an upgrade of a previous, just blow away everything except the /home partition) was like that. If the installation is into one partition - the way things are usually with MS-Windows - it become VERY brittle and insecure.

In that regard, I tend to agree. Forget the enterprise or other scenarios - this is solely regarding the case of a minimal install on a resource-limited client machine that has absolutely no need for an MTA to be installed. Even client software such as Kmail/Evolution/Thunderbird can send via an external mail server.

:-) And more to the point, while all those *can* access local files, the user has to know and set it up to do so. No wonder people are returning the Linux netbooks; Linux as is takes too much set-up. The old accusation that UNIX was written by geeks for geeks seems to be true in trumps for Linux. -- The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mould reality in the light of their purposes. Henry Kissinger -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Anton Aylward wrote:

I was shocked when I first saw some of the heavy processing going on, not least of all putting the syslog records in a relational database so that all manner of analysis can be done, time trends and such like, that simply isn't possible with reports by email.

Like I said - syslog is for audit trails and post-mortem analysis - email and SNMP are more for the real-time alert. [big snip about email - I didn't quite get your point]

System control rather than simply passive monitoring is another matter. network components such as routers and switches report by syslog and SNMP, but syslog is a reporting mechanism not a controlling mechanism. If you want to expand this to control then pleas change the subject line. At present it says "monitor".

No, this is not about controlling.

...

Which distro were you running? Maybe it was a better option for you.

SunOS back when, Solaris; UNIX V6 and V7 when I was a kernel hacker, SYSIII, SYSV Berkeley BSD 2.4 though 2.8 and 4.0 though 4.1; AIX from the beginning through to current; man versions of HP/UX; DG/UX; many now defunct versions of microprocessor "unix" not least of all SCO's XENIX, including the ports of it by HCR to various platforms. I even had one spell using Zeus on a machine running the Zilog Z-8001 processor though I thought the Onyx version on their box much more fun. I *like* AIX but can't afford it it home. I've run a number of versions of Linux over the last decade and half, but have little interest in switching back and forth.

Well, I have difficulty in believing that Solaris, AIX and HPUX all manage perfectly well without postfix/sendmail/exim/<anyMTA>, but I don't have enough experience with those to contradict you. Still, why don't you run openSolaris if that does what you want?

...

I'm curious though, how did you manage to receive the various systems alerts and messages without a local MTA? Did you write your own /usr/sbin/sendmail to drop the text directly into the filesystem?

You are failing to differentiate between how I have configured systems and how I thing a system for a variety of different contexts should be allowed to be configured to suit the needs of that context.

You stated very clearly that "before I installed openSUSE none of my non-mail hub machines and in the specific not my laptop or desk workstation ran Postfix, exim, sendmail or other such MTA.". I'm only asking how you did it, that's all. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Anton Aylward wrote:

Its also clear I've seen many operations where syslog is of more importance and email is the audit side.

From your point of view, perhaps. Email in my point of view only started in 1989 when I first brought the DISOSS tape to a colleague of mine who was going to install it. Prior to that syslog was still primarily for audting, and alerts were generated differently. (I grew up in the IBM mainframe arena).

...

No, this is not about controlling.

SNMP is not just about monitoring. Its has control & configuration capability as well.

Anton, please stop being condescending. It does you no good. I'll repeat that this thread is not about controlling, but about monitoring.

...

...

...

Which distro were you running? [...]

Well, I have difficulty in believing that Solaris, AIX and HPUX all manage perfectly well without postfix/sendmail/exim/<anyMTA>, but I don't have enough experience with those to contradict you. Still, why don't you run openSolaris if that does what you want?

You asked me what I've run, you didn't ask about the settings, the context.

Yes, I did in fact ask you just that. Please don't twist my words. Regardless, I'll then ask you directly about "the settings and the context" - i.e. HOW did you do it?

If I really want to be picky I could add my cell phone. I also have a wireless router than runs an embedded Linux. They don't have MTA and their context is a little more self apparent.

Add your garden gnome and your coffee percolator for all I care - we're talking about openSUSE and similar distros, possibly even other similar UNIX systems.

And yes, some of those enterprise networks had workstations & headless devices that had a simple dumb forwarder.

Which was?

...

You stated very clearly that "before I installed openSUSE none of my non-mail hub machines and in the specific not my laptop or desk workstation ran Postfix, exim, sendmail or other such MTA.". I'm only asking how you did it, that's all.

We've drifted from the original point

You may have, I haven't.

which was that openSUSE Postfix demanded you have the LDAP libraries installed.

No, that was not my topic when I started this NEW thread. If you feel that is worth discussing, please start a new thread.

As a final note, you seem to think that the MTA is the deciding factor for me.

Not really, no. I don't give a toss which MTA you use. My point was that if you do not install an MTA (sendmail/postfix/exim) on your openSUSE system, you have really screwed your system up.

The MTA is an incidental. This thread was originally about dependencies. As I pointed out, without a specifically configured MTA many users won't see the system generated mails. They may as well not be there, not happen. It doesn't matter that the default install delivers to localhost; /var/spool/mail/root may as well be linked to /dev/null. The problem is that various utilities need the MTA since mail needs a 'receiver'. There should be an alternative "null" MTA that just does "cat - > /dev/null" and doesn't depend on ldap.

cat <

/dev/null XXX >/usr/sbin/sendmail

If the user isn't part of a, for example, corporate network, then what's the point of this mail? The user isn't going to see it.

Who says that the email has to go to the desktop user?

But once again, the real issue isn't what MTA, its that the present install means that useful facilities such as CRON drag in a MTA that drags in other stuff like LDAP. Setting MAILTO="" won't do anything about that dependency chain.

I really think you need to start a different thread on that topic. I looked at one of my server systems, and I think a saw two LDAP-related libraries plus 4-5 YaST2-ditto. Given that the days of harddisk-sizes measured in megabytes are long gone, what is the _real_ problem?

------ I just checked the sources. The "-DHAS_LDAP" compile-time option enables LDAP in Postfix. Yes, it can be built without the need for LDAP.

Of course it can - seriously, you're quite obviously hung up about this LDAP dependency - open a bugreport, document your findings, and get it fixed. I don't understand why you haven't done so long ago? (or maybe you have?) /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

This may be of value http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Syslog_server http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Enterprise_Syslog_Server I have used both Eventgnosis products to monitor and collect syslog data from many PC's and its really good. The Event Centre application is really great and I have it running on my LAN. The CEP product is for really massive networks 500 PC+ Anton Aylward wrote:

Per Jessen said the following on 10/25/2008 04:21 PM:

...

HOW did you do it?

sSMTP actually, but it was overkill as it only talked to my mailhub. As I said, 'netcat' would have done the job, or a small shell script.

sSMTP 'cos I was keeping mu options open. I had this idea that perhaps I would have a profile for the laptop at home on the home LAN and it forwards to my mailhub, and another profile for when I'm away and it forwards to an ISP and my mailhub fetches that via 'fetchmail'. Anyway, lightweight stuff. The real heavy Postfix set-up is on the mailhub. Keep it DRY.

The point, as Ruben Safir originally made, is that some of the stuff that dependencies drag in is overfill for a single machine, a laptop, a home computer, especially one that is primary concerned with browsing.

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Brian K. White said the following on 10/26/2008 07:59 PM:

opensuse is perfectly functional for it's target, which is contemporary machines from laptops to servers. Contemporary as in todays opensuse on todays laptops. I still say it's absolutely retarded to complain that you can't install or run the latest _anything_ that aims to be full featured and generic (such as opensuse or windows for that matter) on 10 or more year old hardware.

If you have hardware that falls outside the mainstream, then of course you need special software for it.

I suppose you could say the Kindle isn't mainstream, though it runs Linux, but many of the netbooks - not 10 years old - are running on SSDs and don't have the 160G to 320G of "mainstream" laptops. Netbooks seem to be coming with 8G, 16G or 40G SSD. I have a friend with a Eee 900 and he installed Mandriva on a 16G model without having to hack the dependency, runs KDE, T'bird, FF. Can that be done with openSUSE-11.0 while respecting the dependency? How much workspace is left over? However, I do note that while MySQL and PostGres are plugins for Postfix, LDAP is compiled in, which is why its a dependency. This despite the documentation that openSUSE supplies mentioning that LDAP can be a plugin. Who made the decision that LDAP would be compiled in and hence a necessary dependency but not MySQL? MySQL is easier to set up than LDAP. BTDT - both ways. -- Me...a skeptic? I trust you can prove that. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 28 October 2008 12:05:06 am Per Jessen wrote:

It's been a while since I've done a full complete-with-gui openSUSE installation, but I seem to remember the installation summary usually ending up around 2.5-3Gb. My AMD64 workstation which I use for development has an openSUSE 10.3 install, with currently 10Gb of diskspace taken up.  About 1Gb of that is miscellaneous source code in /usr/src, java and Adobe stuff take up some 1.3Gb in /opt, and I've no doubt got a pile of unneeded multimedia stuff.

I read somewhere that a 20MB hard drive is all you'll ever need... Oh, and has anyone been able to get on the Codeweavers site today? -- kai www.filesite.org || www.perfectreign.com Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it. - Dee Hock -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Brian K. White said the following on 10/26/2008 07:59 PM:

I don't know that tomorrow I won't suddenly have a need for ldap, and so I'm perfectly happy that my system is ready to do it even though I never used it so far. It's a common enough thing that support should be in there.

That's a specious argument. I use MySQL for my applications, but I *might* one day want to use Oracle or DB2. That doesn't mean I *have* to have them loaded right now. I'm happy to have them as installable when I need them. Support for them is there when I need it. Just like I might one day want to use Gnome or XFCE, but I don't have to have them loaded right now ... but they are there to be installed if and when I need them. Just like .... and so on. The logical corollary to your argument, Brian, is to load up *everything* since you don't know that one day you might have a need for it, even though you've never used it so far. -- The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. --Thomas Jefferson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2008-10-27 at 04:57 -0000, Robert E A Harvey wrote:

...

If you don't want a large general purpose distribution, then don't install a large general purpose distribution.

That is an almost compelling arguement. However, Suse is still the only distro that uses YAST, apart from some very odd derivatives.

If someone has been using YAST for some years and is happy with it, and the package manager is advertised as capable of removing as well as adding packages, then it's not entirely unreasonable for someone to try to install suse for another machine and then try to prune off some of the things that are overburden.

You still need to recompile many apps to not include ldap support, and one of the things that opensuse boasts about, is ldap integration. Yes, pam may use plugins, but other apps don't. So I don't think it will be done. However, anybody could create a project in the buildservice doing just that: recompile all those apps that use ldap, without. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkFfZ4ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UBTwCff6NVKJ8Ude0eYlf0VRKRNJ1/ CWwAoIraCqrK7xRE/d/9fv3+OKWIRiGa =6Qgp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Sound advice. So, where is the cutoff? And who decides? Haven't we had this debate before? Personally, I LIKE to refurbish older machines.

Actually so do I. I just don't expect most of the current versions of the larger distros to run on them. If they do or can be made to with install options, that's nice, but I don't think the distro is broken if it is too much for an older machine. Where is the cut off? There is no single cut off. If a machine was new in 2002, then the best software to run on it is stuff from near 2002. Some small number of years before and after. What number of years? Who cares? Sometimes you're lucky and can run 5 year newer software, sometimes you lose compatibility the next year. Either way, there is software available that runs on that hardware. I'm sure opensuse 6,7,8,9 will run just fine on that P3-700. It is unreasonable to expect to get the ever increasing levels of functionality that new software provides, out of the same unchanging old hardware. I have machines where hardware support was simply removed from the mainline kernel, affecting all distros, simply because no one was updating the scsi card driver or the multiport serial card driver and the kernel changed it's driver api and no one updated these drivers to the new api, so they didn't work, and so they were removed. So, I either stopped using that old scsi card, or kept using the old software that supported it. It's just that simple.

Case in point - everyone raves about the new netbooks. For less than $100, I put together a Thinkpad X21, P3/700/384MB. Runs about as fast as some of the netbooks I have seen, but has a better keyboard, and better screen(taller anyway. most web pages are vertical). So, I saved a good bit of cash. Yes, it isn't AS small, but it's more usable, and the battery lasts over 3hours(and used at that), and it's very portable. That's what I call value.

I would use such a machine too. Well actually what I would do is exactly what I did. I paid a little over $2k and got a vaio-tz which is about as small as the netbooks, yet has every hardware convenience (dvd-rw-dl, gigabit, wifi-n, evdo, cam, bluetooth, fingerprint reader) and actually has a longer battery life. The notebook, a more portable version of it's charger, the power cord, and a 15 foot super flat cat5e cord and a few misc items like usb sticks a couple cd's etc all packs into a tiny carry case designed for the 13" macbook. (the vaio is only 11 inches) and the whole thing weighs less than most normal laptops just bare by themselves. That thing, in order to remain tiny in size, and in order to have a 5 hour battery life, one compromise is cpu, it's only a 1.06 ghz core2duo, and the ram, it's 2 gigs, but in the form of a single stick (so no dual-channel) and only running at 533mhz. It's brand new, and so it shipped with Vista, but I don't run vista on it. I run XP and xubuntu. I also have freebsd and sco open server partitions but I dont use those for general work, they are just for testing, reference, and bragging rights. (it was NOT a simple matter to get even freebsd on there, let alone SCO, because of the odd dvd drive which is internally connected via usb. I have old machines I soup up for the fun of it too, but they sit in the corner and I don't actually use them except in a few odd cases where one may serve as a router or light duty server or appliance. They don't run desktops. Such machines would not be good enough today even if I tried to customize one manually. Web sites just require too much these days. The mobile boom will help that, but still there will be too many sites that expect you to be using a modern pc. A souped up old machine is a toy not a tool. I don't think it's wrong for opensuse and other main distros not to waste time on that. It might amuse me to keep a 386 alive, or to play with a little device that fits in my pocket. But, they can only ever be toys. I can't go without a dvd drive, at least a cd burner, wired and wireless nics, and enough cpu, ram and hd space to actually run apps and store data. I don't think opensuse should waste time on toys. The netbooks and the various appliances and embedded devices all have super custom versions of debian or fully custom systems of their own, not stock versions of anything. I see nothing wrong with that. My palm centro has more cpu and ram and "hd" (in the form of flash) than my first full pc's. However it runs a comparatively limited PalmOS system instead of the desktop and server os's I ran on those pc's. Even though the cpu could handle it and there is more than enough ram and filesystem room for it, I can't install and run my text based database and application development system on it. There is nothing really wrong with that. I have no need to be able to install opensuse 11.0 on a machine that small and slow today. It's fine for that device to require it's own special optimized system. Same goes for netbooks. In any event, the original poster doesn't even have a problem as far as I can see. It sounds like he's just inventing a problem because he doesn't like the idea that there is an MTA or that there are ldap libraries. Other people have pointed out that there isn't even necessarily any big ldap dependancy anyways. So he chose to install something that specifically pulled in ldap with it. Trying to have a unix based system without an mta today is just silly. It's possible because anything is possible, but it's well outside the norm, and so he should just accept that he is obligated to hand craft his own customized system that has no mta or simple local forwarder. There is some dependacy sprawl where various things pull in all kinds of junk you don't really want. I'm not saying that there isn't some excess and inefficiency there, I'm just saying most of it isn't worth worrying or complaining about. Certainly not the mta in particular. My production servers don't even have desktops and are never accessed in gui mode, yet I end up having half or more of gnome (and thus x11) pulled in anyways just because I do use imagemagic and ghostscript and some other things which have both gui and non-interactive modes, and so they end up pulling in most of the desktop environment as "dependancies", when none of that junk is actually used at all. It's absolutely not even worth thinking about let alone rasing a stink about, and it's a lot more files and total size than the OP is talking about. I want some tool, and the tool only exists because it was easy to write, because lots of libraries existed for the author(s) to use, and so, to get the tool I have to get the libaries, which in turn may depend on yet larger systems of libraries and maybe even running daemons. Well. I want the tool so be it. Sure it could physically be written without most of that stuff that I don't happen to use, but the fact is, then it simply wouldn't have been written at all, or not nearly as fully featured. So the choice is really live without or live with a little excess. Everything we have could actually be written in assembly instead of the higher level languages and could then run on much smaller hardware, except, no it can't. The man-hours don't exist for that. That's the opposite of value. What's value is, you get a lot more bang for your buck having developers able to use big fat rich libraries and big fat rich languages, who can produce a large powerful app and then continue to improve it with large changes on a constant basis. And that all requires more hardware, but the hardware costs waaaay less than the cost of either coding everything in low level languages or living without the rapid, and ever increasing rate, of development, or living without many things entirely, at any stage of development. I'll take the development, and pay the hardware price, thanks. So, by a completely different route we arrive at the same conclusion that you should be happy to run opensuse 6 or some other old version of linux on old hardware, because in a world where developers were more concerned about hardware instead of development, opensuse 11 as we know it today wouldn't exist anyways. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Pardon me, but even openSUSE 11.1 runs fine on my computer, which is year 2000 vintage.

Yeah, he missed my whole point about having better than a netbook for LESS $$ than a netbook. I use this Thinkpad A22p P3/1Ghz/256MB/250GB machine on a daily basis. It's 1600x1200 15" screen is amazing crisp(but not as bright tho), and it does all my normal web browsing tasks, plays movies, etc just fine. And, since it's a 4x3 screen, I can actually read more text. Other than needing to get it a new battery, I've got about $175 in it with the 250GB drive. I've personally NEVER purcahsed a brand new fully built computer. I did spend a bit a while back to build a celeron e1200 that's overclocked @ 3.2Ghz right now, has 2GB RAM, and an nVidia 6200(had an X300, but that died....). I used an old case, and it does everything I need it to do. I'm not made of money. I see little reason to buy new when my refurbished machines do what I need to do. What Brian is talking about is the bigger better thing deal, and that's what M$ wants us to do with WinDoZe. With Linux, I have the freedom to run my old 486 machine if I want, as long as I understand the limitations. The only thing my Thinkpads (the P3s) don't do is play HD, and I could care less about that. I have a 50" HD TV for that. Oh well....... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Brian K. White wrote:

I didn't miss anything about netbook functionality. Run a netbook class os on a netbook class device.

Or use an older product that basically offers everything that the netbooks offer, but in a better package.

And if you don't want bigger and better, then why doesn't that apply to software? Run opensuse 10, 9, or 8 if 11 doesn't work on some old hardware.

I do actually. I have SuSE 8.1 on an old Thinkpad that only takes 96MB RAM. Can't run the newer web broswers tho. However, I can install DSL or Puppy and it would be ok. DIstros like that are geared to lower end hardware and I don't expect openSUSE to cater to that end. I'm the one who went through all the PowerMacs and submitted a list of actually usable machines versus those that weren't worth supporting and asking whether we should drop support for older machines, but never really got any answer back.

If it does run ok on something from 2000 as the other person who missed the point that 2002 was just an example, well fine that's just gravy. I don't see the problem.

The problem was saying that you shouldn't try to run a modern system on older hardware. What you need to realize is that older hardware that was upgradable or expandable is perfectly capable of running modern OS's so long as you plan ahead before implementation. A powermac 9600 that's been upgraded to a G4/1Ghz, 1.5GB RAM, and SATA drives can run openSUSE 11.0 very fast. It is limited by it's 50Mhz memory bus, but that's not a really a deal breaker for most prodcutivity stuff or web browsing, Movie reencoding is tho. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

----- Original Message ----- From: "Per Jessen" To: Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 5:10 AM Subject: [opensuse] Re: running open/suse on ancient hardware (was: ranting and raving about dependancies.) Larry Stotler wrote:

...

And if you don't want bigger and better, then why doesn't that apply to software? Run opensuse 10, 9, or 8 if 11 doesn't work on some old hardware.

I do actually. I have SuSE 8.1 on an old Thinkpad that only takes 96MB RAM.

I can beat that with my firewall, a 486DX2 running SUSE 7.1 in just 24Mb RAM. The machine is about 16 years old, and has gone through three harddisks by now. I'm about to replace the whole thing because I want to do traffic-shaping, but otherwise I would probably start using a compact flash disk instead. ----- Wellll... if we wanna talk old or minimal linux... Without sort of cheating and talking about current embedded stuff. This is still basically a pretty modern linux, I mean, it was late 2.0 kernel. But still... One time the regular UPS guy that came to place I worked every day spotted two old GRiD laptops on someones trash pile and brought them to me while on his route. 386sx-16 , 2M ram, some tiny hd space like 20M. mono vga lcd. (approximately like a calculator screen with a little better contrast and brightness, except 640x480 pixels, perhaps not even 256 shades of grey) I robbed the ram from one to make the other 4M The mb had no provision for clearing the bios password but the chip was removable and I was able to clear the bios by popping it into a different board just to use it's cmos-clear jumper with power applied. And using only a tomsrtbt floppy I got the original win3.1 partition resized without destroying and got a lilo based dual boot and tomsrtbt installed on an hd partition. Made a plip cable and had plip networking to a redhat pc. Then I found a 486slc upgrade chip that fit in the 386sx qfp socket and it never ran for more than a few minutes again :/ This was around '98 and I think the laptop was from the late 80's. I'd love a new machine packed into that grid case. The way the screen unfolded with a sort of brace in the middle so it was held in place by a sort of pyramidal geometry like an easel was bulletproof. I completely beleive the stories about them being dropped down cement fire escape stairs while open and running and suffering only paint damage at the corners. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org