[CLUE-Tech] Upgrading to Red Hat V7.2 - Experiences?

[Randy Arabie]

On Sun, 25 Nov 2001 jimintriglia at americanisp.net wrote:

> >I successfully installed Red Hat 7.1 on my P133 with 64MB, and it's
> >still running quite happily there, so I'm not sure what the 132MB(?) 
> >limitation is about...
> 
> Actually this P133 of mine has 64MB not 132MB, and Linux V7.1 refused to load on
> it due to 'insufficient memory'. You're mileage varied. 

I ran into the same problem trying to install RH7.1 on a Dell 486/75 w/24MB.
It was just the incentive I needed to try OpenBSD.  I'm sure there are numerous 
Linux distro's that would have been happy to reside on my ancient hardware, but 
I was quite curious about BSD at the time so I took the plunge.  I was building 
a gateway/firewall machine and OpenBSD fit the bill perfect.

Back on topic:

The problem for me was defintely a RH installation issue.  I was booting 
the boot.img off a floppy, going into text install mode and trying to do an FTP 
install from an FTP server on my home network (the little Dell doesn't even 
have a CDROM drive!).  I was attempting a clean install, not an upgrade.

Each time, as the installation tried to load the install program from the source 
directory on the FTP server it would fall over (loading anaconda i think) with 
a message like "you have insufficient memory to run the RH installer".

My conclusion at the time was, RedHat is no longer the choice for old hardware.  

As I learn more about the guts of Linux, I'm moving that direction anyway, and 
will probably try another distribution for my next install...hopefully on an 
Alpha :-) (Thanks Mike).

I started with RH, as it had (still does??) the largest user base.  I think it 
is a fantastic way to learn Linux.

-- 

Cheers!

Randy

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Randy Arabie
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