On 16/04/12 21:34, Aleksandar Kostadinov wrote:
To anybody interested, debian wheezy can't run on 64MB RAM on i386. Or actually it can run but package management is unusable so all debian benefits are actually lost. I tried pulling the .deb files on another machine, then transfer to the old machine. But dpkg is killed on 95% reading database (I think OOM killer). It fails even if I try to install 1 package.
I run a basic Wheezy system on old machines with 64MB or 32MB of RAM on i386. I agree that the package management is almost unusable without work.
What I do for a start is run a cutomised kernel with just the necessary drivers for those machines built in. Smaller kernel = more memory free for other things. Any devices other than the built in ones are supported via kernel modules when needed.
Also, and this is the important thing, I have my own cut-down version of the Wheezy repository running on a slightly more powerful machine. By reducing the Packages file to just the packages that I use, the time and memory needed to process them comes down from hours to a few minutes.
I realise that I'm not going to be able to keep these machines running for much longer, but I'll keep trying for as long as I can.
-- Dom