Re: Low-memory Debian (was: General Questions)
On 25 Jul 2023 08:18 -0400, from greg@wooledge.org (Greg Wooledge):
>>> 3. Is it possible to reduce RAM consumption? And minimize it? Let's say up
>>> to 100-200 mb?
>>
>> That depends on what you choose to run, and how. I would not
>> recommend trying to do anything interesting on a machine with
>> less than 256MB of RAM. That will not be enough for many common
>> uses.
>
> According to <https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/amd64/ch03s04.en.html>
> 256 MB is the absolute minimum amount of RAM for installing bookworm
> on an AMD64 machine, using the text installer and no GUI packages.
>
> However, if one is trying to set up a low-memory server of some kind,
> especially in a virtual machine or similar environment, that's an
> entirely different line of questioning.
Agreed. I did some experimentation earlier with KVM VMs on an amd64
host and amd64 Debian 12.0; and was able to get it to install
successfully down to 480 MiB RAM (below that the installer would fail
to detect the virtio network interface), and the thus-installed system
would boot with RAM reduced to 246 MiB (not a typo), but below that,
it would fail to boot. That was with a bare minimums text-mode
installed system and using the text-mode installer with a preseed
file installing only the "standard" and "ssh-server" tasks.
Definitely below the specified 256 MiB RAM minimum you'd be on your
own. If you're looking to fit a system into less (at least on amd64),
Debian might not be the distribution for you.
--
Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”
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