[Asterisk-Users] Absolute Minimum Installation Packages

[Chris Albertson]

I've got an old notebook 486DX2 with 8MB RAM and a _very_ small
drive.  Linux runs fine on it but no-way can I even run the
RedHat install program.  The 486 make a good fire wall.
It take little power and little space, has a builtin battery UPS
and screen. And even a 486 can handle a 1Mb ADSL line.
Butit can't run RedHat.

A minimal Linux system will fit on a self contained
floppy disk and run in about 4MB of RAM  On top of this,
to run Asterisk you wil need Asterisk, it's drivers,
any *.so files that "ldd" finds plus
any "extras".  The extras can be quite large like
Festival amd mp3123 and PostgreSQL and a web server and
so on.

I'd recommand any of the floppy disk based distributions
over RedHat if you have very minimal hardware.
I've used "tomsrtbt" www.toms.net/rb/  for years now.
It is easy to modify
too as there is a file you can edit which controls
what gets put on the disk.  With tomsrtbt the idea
is that you build a bootable image using a large
RedHat or Debiam system and then move that disk over
to the target hardware.  Normally this is a floppy
but you can make it an LS120 or small IDE with some
editing of his scripts.

I use tomsrtbtas a hardware diagnostic floppy for
even MS Windows based systems.  It runs out of ram
without a hard drive and I can look around in /proc
to see what's up with the hardware and it runs on
systems that can't boot Windows, or Redhat.
So go to www.toms.net/rb/ and try it out.

You could also boot with off the self tomsrtbt then ftp
or nfs transfer Asterisk

but you may fid other floppy based Linuxs you like.
but Redhat just will not run on the real low end

"slackware" might work too.  I ued to run it back
when my biggest PC was a 386 back when Linux kernal was
still 0.x but have not used slackware Linux in many years.

Today I used RedHat, Tomsrtbt and Solaris

(BTW I'd recommend Solaris for that guy with 50,000
users who asked here earlier as it is hard to find
a Intel box with more then 4 GB RAM or 4 CPUs)



--- JR Richardson <jr.richardson at cox.net> wrote:
> I'm trying to get the total Linux/* installation size as small as
> possible.
> I'm wondering if anyone has looked at the installed packages list
> from the
> Redhat installation [rpm -qa] and has parsed out all packages not
> needed for
> * to run.  I follow the custom install guide from Andy Powell but the
> installation yields 948+ Meg with 340 installed packages.  I'm sure
> most of
> those packages can be eliminated.
> 
>  
> 
> If the installation can be reduced to below, say 600 Meg, then
> there's an
> opportunity to harden * into a KNOPPIX Customization.
> 
>  
> 
> BTW, has anyone already tried to produce a KNOPPIX * Customization?
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
>  
> 
> JR
> 
> 


=====
Chris Albertson
  Home:   310-376-1029  chrisalbertson90278 at yahoo.com
  Cell:   310-990-7550
  Office: 310-336-5189  Christopher.J.Albertson at aero.org
  KG6OMK

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