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Re: Hello & Problems installing emdebian



On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 21:45:17 +0100
John Doe <debian_n2200@zayc.net> wrote:

> I'm thinking of installing the system on an rather ancient hardware,
> which is IBM 8363 terminal. It's a x86 machine with something around
> 260 MB RAM tops, an extension slot for CF cards, ethernet, 2 x USB
> port and a D-SUB video output.
> I am able to boot a Linux 2.4 kernel there and I was thinking about
> getting a decent OS for that :-)

I think you've misread the website:
"Some Emdebian installations can make lower demands on the machine
hardware but this would be because the Emdebian installation is based
on packages already in Debian that are intended for such purposes.
Using the same packages with a Debian installation is likely to be
little different to the same packages with an Emdebian installation.
Therefore, an old PC with a reasonably large hard drive (or a capacity
to use a modern multi-gigabyte hard drive) is not likely to benefit
from Emdebian."

Emdebian is currently no different to standard Debian for your system.

> However, following the instructions
> given for emdebian-rootfs on your www site doesn't give me any good,

emdebian-rootfs is geared towards Emdebian Crush which is only
available for ARM right now.

Emdebian Crush will result in only minimal changes compared to Debian
on your hardware, with the same packages. 

> it goes like:
> 
> debian:~# sudo emsandbox create --arch i386

There are no i386 packages that emsandbox can use. You would have to
build them yourself.

> E: Couldn't find these debs: util-linux dhcp3-client libnewt0.52
> libdebian-installer4 cdebconf whiptail mktemp zlib1g apt libncurses5
> libstdc++6 libc6 busybox mount libreadline5 debianutils gpgv
> initscripts libgcc1 base-files module-init-tools base-passwd libslang2
> gnupg udev dpkg
> 
> Now, the beloved newbie question on every single list: what the heck
> is wrong here and why? I hope that this is some trivial issue that you
> will be able to give me hints about in no time.

It is non-trivial. It would take a couple of months to prepare packages
for Crush on i386 but work on adding more architectures to Crush is
currently stalled until after the release of Debian Lenny. First arch
to be added to Crush will be armel. i386 probably won't be available
until the end of the year due to other issues in Debian and Emdebian.

But besides all that, Emdebian (Crush or Grip) will not give you what
you seem to be expecting because the packages will still make the same
demands of the resources on your machine - especially RAM.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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