How to install (fingers in the noise) Potato/Debian 2.2 on a 
4Mb RAM computer ?

Need 80Mb of HD, a computer, a another system (Win or Linux), two floppy,
a internet connection AND a couple of hours.

There is a howto for low-mem installation but i had lot of problem and
wortel(#debian/ircnet) thinks that could be great to make a text :)

Remember like lot of linux stuff you do it at YOUR OWN RISK.

Step by Step :

- Get Smalllinux (see on www.freshmeat.net) and make the root and boot 
floppy (use ramdisk on Win or "cat sm?oot.bin > /dev/fd?" on linux)
- Boot with boot floppy, and press under to mount root floppy
- Install 3 partition on your disk : 4Mb for hda1, 20Mb for hda3 and the
rest for hda2 ("fdisk /dev/hda")
- Format the partition ("mkfs.ext2 /dev/hd1 && mkfs.ext2 /dev/hd2 && 
mkswap /dev/hda3")
- Mount /dev/hda2 on /mnt ("mount /dev/hda2 /mnt")
- Copy the file from / to /mnt, in the doc the author say that you can
use a "cp -v -a / /mnt" but there is a problem with /proc ... i don't
see why. Make your own stuff with all diretory ("cp -v -a /bin /mnt" and
make it with all directory)
- ReBoot on boot floppy, and put "mount root=/dev/hda2" to boot on your
new root disk
- Copy on the old root floppy the root disk of potato
- Mount it and copy to /dev/hda1 ("mkdir /mnt2 && mount /dev/fd0 /mnt &&
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt2 && cp -v -a /mnt/* /mnt2")
- ReReBoot on boot floppy, and put "mount root=/dev/hda1"
- Swap on tty2, active swap ("swapon /dev/hda3") mount the partition
("mount /dev/hda2 /target")
- Return to the tty1, if you want to install some stuff, you must say in
tty2 that your disk in mounted in rw and not ro ("mount /dev/hda1 / -o
remount,rw")
- Go directly to install base, don't try to install kernel because your
kernel is a 2.0.0 and will not work with the modules of 2.2.17
- After install dont reboot, go on /target/etc/init.d, copy all the stuff
in a new dir called tmp (in /target/etc/init.d/tmp) for example move all
the stuff but keep mountall.sh, rc and rcS.
- Edit mountall.sh and put at the end, "swapon /dev/hda3 &&
mount /proc /proc -t proc && mount /dev/hda2 / -o remount,rw"
- ReReReboot and specify to boot on /dev/hda2 ("mount root=/dev/hda2")
- Answer questions, and when its finish, mount the boot floppy, copy vmlinux
on /, umount and mount the root floppy (coming from smalllinux) copy the
lilo.conf on /etc/
- Edit the lilo.conf and change the /dev/hda1 to /dev/hda2
- Run lilo, put out all the floppy, write reboot and if you are lucky ... 

THAT'S RUN :))

- After that do your stuff, delete the command you dont need, make a new
kernel to put some modules ... i dont do it for now ... i cant say the
good option

There is a "bug" at the reboot, i dont understand why thats allways ask 
root password for maintenance but i dont really try to understand.

About me, i install it on a T1900 (Laptop) 4Mb RAM, 120 Mb HD and 486 SX 20.
That's running, but its a bit slow :))) but i see that with one consol open,
i only need 4Mb and the swap is not use ...

Send a Thanks to #debian & #linux-fr /IRCNET which give me help and
to wortel who will try to see if there is a sens in what i write :)

For a question, any change of this text or if you have nothing to do
write to froggy@citeweb.net
			
							   (05/09/00)
						Froggy / Froggy Corp.

						Last Update (24/06/01)