I'm so @£¤%£$# angry

[carls]

Not Amiga, but PC...

I recently got my hands on a Pentium 166MHz with 96 megs of RAM and a 2.5 gig hard drive, so I figured I'd set up a small web server on it to play around with.

At first, I installed WinNT4 with Apache and MySQL and everything went fine - slow, but fine. But then I realized how limited I would be in the remote administration part. I'm going to put the machine at work and remote desktop and similar products will be dog slow over the encrypted VPN from my home machine, so I figured I'd install Linux and run thttpd on it instead of Apache.

I'm fairly good at Linux, I'd like to call myself a power-user or at least an advanced user. Of course, I'm still living in the late nineties since that's when I learned Linux (Slackware).

Since it's an old computer I figured I'd go with an older distribution. I've got Knoppix, RedHat 6.1 and RedHat 8.0 (I think) at home so I settled with RH6.1.

Now the fun begins.

I go through ALL the packages in the package list and select the ones I want. Still, RH installs a friggin' SMP kernel and a bunch of other useless stuff like PCMCIA support. Well, the PCMCIA support is easily removed from the init and I can rebuild the kernel later on. I can live with having the other useless software packages installed, they're just using some disk space and there's enough of old hard drives to go around.

Then I realize that neither ssh nor sshd is installed, so I decide to download them from redhat.com. Oh, but noooo, my system is too old!

I don't know what I'm going to do with the machine now. It's far too slow to run UAE or Amithlon, Windows is not an option because of the flaws in administration and it seems that most of todays Linux distributions are too bloated for a 2.5 gig disk and 96 megs of RAM.

ARRGGHHHHH! :destroy:

Any ideas?

[mikeymike]

A BSD might suit your purposes better.  A friend of mine is running a P233MMX/128MB RAM, running all you've said and more without any problems.

If he's ok with it, and you would like a bit of help with it, he might be able to help you out.

Btw, there is openssh for NT4.  Can't remember if I ever got it working, or whether it's any use at all, but anyway :-)

Btw [2] I'm not a BSD advocate :-)  I've used it for longer than any Linux distro I've tried, and certain things are much easier to accomplish on it, but other things, like my failed attempt to get the nvidia FreeBSD driver working on it turned me off it :-)

[carls]

Yeah, I might give FreeBSD a try. A lot of people say it's very good and easy to use.

As for WinNT and OpenSSH... well, I woulnd't like to try out administering an NT machine from the command prompt only

[Jost80]

A new version of BSD would run fine on that hardware. I use a P166 with 32mb ram wih 2.5gb systemdisk running OpenBSD as a firewall/routr/webbserver/irc/shell etc for my home network with no problems at all.

[amigamad]

I  just found this distro called dam small linux its a small linux distro that can run from the cd and it can be installed to hard drive. link here damed small linux disto

I have not tried it but it is only 50 meg ,

there main website is here and has screenshots damned small linux :-)

[carls]

Well, BSD it is then. At least I'll give it a try :-)

[carls]

@amigamad
Thanks for the link! Seems like Damn Small Linux is very desktop-oriented, however... There's neither ssh nor a web server in the package list. It would be nice with a similar distro made for server use, however... Just pop the CD in the drive and off you go :-)

edit: oops, at least it had SSH... More than you could say about RedHat ;-)

[mikeymike]

re: FreeBSD

I can give you a few basic pointers here and there, how to install stuff, how to recompile kernels, disable basic stuff, email me if you run into any problems and would like some help.

[danamania]

Of all things, the current debian woody (sans X) works pretty well for my server. It does webserving, cgi guff, php, mail serving, POP mail and lets me remote irc. It runs quite well, on a 68k 040/33 with 36mb ram and a 750mb HD. I imagine for a P166 debian would fly quite well - and debian's packages seem pretty comprehensive.

dana
(oh. debian is the only linux I've used, so I may be biased

[Piru]

Then I realize that neither ssh nor sshd is installed, so I decide to download them from redhat.com. Oh, but noooo, my system is too old!

In general RedHat is pain in the ass to upgrade. Basically you'll end up reinstalling the whole OS with newer RedHat version.

On the other hand debian (and debian based) distros provide damn robust and logical packaging system and apt-get to download/install/remove packages. To keep my x86-laptop (P120, 48MB ram, 10gig HD) upto date I do 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' weekly. No further maintaining is required.

 00:16:04 up 232 days,  6:05, 16 users,  load average: 0.02, 0.14, 0.16

[mikeymike]

In general RedHat is pain in the ass to upgrade. Basically you'll end up reinstalling the whole OS with newer RedHat version.

Sounds like the RedHat developers have been reading the Windows songsheet again :-)

[dammy]

by carls on 2003/6/29 16:31:06

Since it's an old computer I figured I'd go with an older distribution. I've got Knoppix, RedHat 6.1 and RedHat 8.0 (I think) at home so I settled with RH6.1.

Wrong choice of RHs.  RH 7.3 should have been your choice, although 9.0 is reasonable.  There is no reason, unless you didn't uncheck "everything" option, to have more then a single kernel installed.  6.1 should never be used for the Net unless your a sadist who enjoys running a crap load of security updates and patches.

Dammy

[ncafferkey]

Redhat 8.0 works fairly well on my Pentium 200 with a 2 gig disk.

[downix]

@carts

OpenBSD I'd recommend.  Very secure and likes old hardware.

[carls]

@mikeymike
Thanks!
Ok, first question :-)
Would the FBSD4.8 mini-ISO cover my needs? I'll download and compile thttpd myself.