[689] in netbsd-help mailing list archive
Re: Linux/NetBSD (w/AFS?) on memory-constrained machine
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (The Elven Knight)
Thu Feb 1 03:33:11 1996
To: Danilo Almeida <dalmeida@MIT.EDU>
Cc: linux-help@MIT.EDU, netbsd-help@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 01 Feb 1996 01:40:30 EST."
<199602010640.BAA00390@playdoh.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 1996 03:27:41 EST
From: The Elven Knight <elf@MIT.EDU>
> There's a 386/25 with 5Mb RAM in my living group currently running a pre-1.0
> version of Linux. We'd like to have it be more usable, possibly running AFS
> if memory permits (fat chance). First, I would like to know if Linux or
> NetBSD
> uses less memory (if anyone knows). Secondly, what are the memory issues
> that would be involved for each OS if we were to try running AFS on this
> machine?
I'm pretty sure Linux eats up less memory. We're running 1.2.13 on a 5MB
386SX/16 with AFS, and it crawls along. We are also running the Athena
version of login. Sure, it's VERY slow, but it does the job...
You can compile the AFS kernel to well under 300KB. You'll just have to
make sure that you have enough swap space (we have 30MB) and realise that
it will slow down quite a bit with AFS.
On the other hand, I can't get AFS to run on a friend's 4MB 486DX/33. It
runs out of memory and fails to mount AFS.
Also, you don't need AFS just to read/write mail. Kerberos and the
mhmail/mhlib packages suffice for that.
-- Mieszko
