Trying to install gentoo on Pentium 2 machine, and gcc keeps seg faulting

rajcan · 02-11-2011, 08:17 PM

So I've got an old P2 machine that's previously had Win2k, FreeBSD, and Ubuntu Server on it. Now I'm trying to install gentoo, but I've run into a little problem. I'm trying to compile the kernel now and gcc keeps seg faulting. And it's not in the same spot. It'll randomly do it, but if I execute 'make && make modules_install' again, it'll pick back up where it left off. I tried emerging gcc but I get the same error.

i92guboj · 02-12-2011, 01:50 AM

Random segfaults usually equal to hardware failure, so, I'd start by running memtest86+. Most livecds do have an option in their boot menu to do so.

rajcan · 02-12-2011, 09:50 PM

ok, yeah, one of my ram sticks was bad, so now I've got a new problem, as that leaves me with only 128mb for ram. I wasn't planning on only having commandline, but even still, that doesn't seem like that'd be enough.

i92guboj · 02-13-2011, 04:48 PM

You have little options there.

Either buy more ram (second hand, which means that you will have to memtest it before paying) or look for a binary distro that suits you. There are many that could run in your hardware.

With enough swap space you could compile anything, but current (2011) toolchain will probably take quite a lot to compile (days, weeks, who knows).

i92guboj · 02-14-2011, 01:11 AM

More options.

If you have a network with at least one powerful machine you can setup a distributed compilation environment, look into distcc.

If you don't, you could try to use uclibc just like you'd do on an embedded system. That will probably make it much lighter, but I have no experience with uclibc myself.

rajcan · 02-15-2011, 02:59 PM

Whoops, I meant to say that I was only gonna have commandline. I've had freebsd and ubuntu server on this machine, so I know it can handle it, I'm trying gentoo now in the hope of knocking out some generic stuff from the kernel. It's got a 15GB hard drive, I'm just wondering if 128MB is enough for commandline only.