Best GCC Flags for Memory and Size?
 

I am creating a very minimal LFS distro that will be targeted towards a very low ram machine as a server.

The machine has 32MB of RAM and a P3 Processor.

I am using a flash drive as the hard drive. The flash drive is rated at 512 MB.

The processor I am not worried about but the RAM I am.

What would be the best optimization flags for RAM and Size?

I didn't set "march" to "native" because I am building the LFS distro on a much much faster PC and going to run it on the older PC.

I know: CFLAGS="-Os -s -march=pentium3" is the minimal but is there anything else?

Should I use "-march=pentium3" or "-march=i686"?

Hello David2010,

I don't think that you have another choice than "march=pentium3", I once built a Gentoo installation on such a machine (but with about 256MB of RAM). As far as I know "pentium3" is more specific than "i686" and should be used in your case.
I'd advice you to take more RAM (if possible). I still have some 64MB modules from old PII-machines which I don't need anymore. If youre interested in these modules please send me a message.
You will have to be carefull when configuring the kernel, with such low memory you may not build a hugh kernel.
While the kernel-configuration you will have more processor- and architecture-specific choices.
Be aware that you can configure the size of the swap-space as well as the priority (in fstab) http://lissot.net/partition/partition-08.html

Markus

Thanks for the help.

I will consider adding more RAM to it but I was trying to make a point to my teacher about Linux and servers.

I already know how to set up a swap partition and how to use it correctly so thats nothing to worry about.

I am assuming that I can test (to see if it works) the LFS distro on my P4 CPU (Development machine) without any problems with "-march=pentium3".