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)