Hi,

I would like to install a linux kernel 2.6.x on a pc104 Pentium 166 MHz with 64 MB of RAM. Now, I don't have a clue from where to start from... Any directions, attempts, suggestions are more than welcome...

Cheers.

I'd start with with a new computer. Or a massively older distro and kernel version. Unless your gonna plop on one of those no gui bare minumum text based runs on a floppy distro's your probably out of luck with something that ancient.

I am about to attempt the same feat. My target is a Tri-M Mz104. Yours sounds very similar. I will be following any replies here very closely. Hopefully, I can contribute once I learn a bit about it.

--- rod.

Since when is 64 MB a prob ?

Puppy or Vector or any other lightweight distro on distrowatch - or DSL or whatever you like to try out IMO - Good luck .

Maybe an "older" Vector which is still configured to installable on Pentium 1's (maybe about two versions back .. not much) & then compile your own kernel.

Slack is 386based - distrowatch.com or org or whatever will give you lots of options .

"Since when is 64 MB a prob ?"

Since about 3 or 4 versions ago for most distros, sometimes more than that. 128 and 256 have been pretty normal requirments for years now.

Yeah the bloated heavy stuff needs at least 256 (SuSE was still able to run on 64MB at V8 as far as I remember) or more because of one million effects & services & whatever else is loaded on boot-up .

But your post suggests that every current distribution fails with 64MB which is of course plain rubbish

Yes they have to be the lightweight Linuxi by now but these are up to date distros .

Guys, please. A PC/104 is not intended to run all the desktop applications normally included in a complete desktop oriented distribution. There is unlikely to be X, or video of any kind. There will likely be a kernel, a small filesystem, probably in memory or on flash, a small handful of common utilities, a simple shell, some driver modules, quite likely oriented to controlling some hardware, and not much else. The original poster was looking for help on how to actually put this stuff on the system, given the paucity of resources. What he asks for is do-able.

--- rod.

Hey guys, thanks a lot for your replies....

First of all, let me say that I was lucky to get my hands on another pc104 kit that has a pentium running at 266MHz and is very rich with 128 MB RAM... It currently runs XUbuntu 6.06.... I don't really need all these GUI stuff so probably I ll either try booting in runlevel 3 or install the server version of Ubuntu. The XUbuntu takes ages to be installed. The server is much faster but I had tiny problems.... my system keeps on rebooting upon loading the kernel image... Will have to investigate on that...

For the nbomr.... I think that if you have the same specs as my original system (ie P5@166MHz with 64MB RAM), then I think that the server version can definetely be installed... Naturally there are some more lightweight distros but since the ubuntu works and seems to have recognised the rest of the modules that will do for now.... I will have to get back though if this is a complete success story...



Some links that I found useful are (although I was lucky so far with my distro so no need to get into too much details at this stage):
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2760742655.html
The above link has A LOT of useful information... if I decide to try a real time kernel (as well).

http://eri.ca.sandia.gov/eri/howto.html
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/


NboMR is also right there is absolutely no need to run a gui (i just did this for my own curiosity) and not all the services which can be later removed.... If this wouldn't be possible I would have to use some other distro which is more specific and lightweight for embedded systems.

One more thing since I saw you are experienced with Fedora... I saw somewhere a post that Fedora can also be installed... Not to mention that with Fedora you can select which packages to install which means you can choose not to install any graphical desktop from the beginning...

PS: Isn't it kind of funny though that the latest disto in the linux world can be run on such a low system... Btw the previouis system running on this pc104 was win98...

Cheers

So, are you booting from a 'disk' (spinning media or other non-volatile memory disk), or over a network? What specific hardware are you using? When you installed Xubuntu, did you have to do much, if anything, to make the system bootable?

--- rod.

Actually I am lucky enough to have a bios that supports booting up from an external usb cdrom drive... The hardware is:
P5 266 MHz MMX
128 RAM
A pcmcia module which has some kind of vagen chipset but got to check when I get into my lab.
An Orinoco Silver or Avaya Silver or Gold PCMCIA Wifi card.
Motherboard also when I get into the lab.

Now the pcmcia module with the wifi card was detected during the installation and managed to get configured on our wifi network using dhcp.... Unfortunately when I boot up the system it appears dead (*shrug*)... Strangely enough all wifi cards are working fine on my laptop which runs Ubuntu 6.06.... ie the same system...

To make the system bootup I had to wait for about 2-3 hrs for the installation... after that it is just fine... If you need the links of the exact modules I can email them to you when I am in my office...

Hi all,

can any one provide me some idea or some code to do driver for PC 104 for linux 2.6 kernel

Driver for what? Most PC/104 systems are just ordinary PC's in a small form factor. Drivers for most components should work with standard kernel modules. PC/104 daughter cards do often tend to require custom drivers, due to their often esoteric nature. The card vendor may be able to provide driver support, there.
This should probably be asked in a new thread for best exposure.
--- rod.