[mu TECH] mu doesn't start at my 386

From: Georg Philipp Burth (georg-philipp.burth@student.uni-tuebingen.de)
Date: Fri Jan 21 2000 - 04:49:51 CET


Hello!

I've recently got an old 386 (besides the 40MHz clone from AMD it seems
to be under the top 100 of the oldest hardware possible) with a 10MB and a
20MB Hard Disk, 4 MB RAM and an Hercules Graphic Card (it uses an 8 bit
ISA slot!). I also put an 10Mbit Ethernet card in it - probably NE2000
compatible. In the moment it runs under DOS 6.2 and Win3.11 but without
the network card installed and without installation disks :(

Since I'd like to use it as a sort of Email terminal I want to have Linux
on it, and since I've read on the homepage of muLinux it has ssh and
Ethernet support I decided to give muLinux a try (OK, I've read also that
4MB are russian roulette...)

I've downloaded the latest version (date 17.01.2000 - 7R8b?), put it on a
floppy and rebooted my 386 with it. The kernel loads as I know it from
other distributions. Then I have a problem: I choose '1 - to continue' in
the menue and got error messages (cut & paste via a sheet of paper :-) ) :

/etc/rc.lowmem: cannot fork
New root is busy. Staying in initrd
change root to /initrd: error -16
INIT: version 2.60 booting
/etc/rc.4: cannot fork
INIT: Entering runlevel: 4
/etc/rc.4: cannot fork
Coming to this point it hangs completely over a long period of time - I
tested a half hour...

the messages before the menue comes say something about 3031040 byte free,
386 SX/DX and GenuineIntel - (btw: the latter I can't believe...).

If I understood the manual correct muLinux should try to make a swap if it
finds only 4 MB but not hanging.

Is there a possibility to get muLinux to work on my machine?
In the moment I want to clone it afterwards on an 20Meg EXT2-partition and
use the 10Meg hard drive as swap space but an installation on a 20Meg
UMSDOS would also be practible.

Should I try an older version of mulinux?

Cause it worked not on the 386 I've tested it on my K6-233 with 64MB RAM
on a 2gig ext2-partition and with 100meg swap and it works fine with the
only unbeautyness I have to boot DOS and running linux.bat... Making an
entry in lilo from my other Linux (SuSE 6.3) didn't work, it told me
something like 'cannot find/work device 01:00' at booting time.

Thanks to the developer for making it modular - I find one-floppy
distributions without this EXT-disk too crippled for dayly use ...

Thanks for your answers and for reading this long mail to this point

Philipp

 

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