[Bassetlug mailing] What you need to run Linux

Sat Mar 7 08:06:03 UTC 2009

Thanks for last night Martin, a great introduction to a very interesting
area.

I bought a PHP and mySQL book last year and this was all heading in same
direction. I have it in mind to ultimately convert my access sermon and
preaching database into an online mysql app!

With regard to getting setup with low spec hardware, as you rightly
pointed out one snag are patches/security issue of an old install.

Perhaps best way round this is to go for one of the specially designed
low footprint installs that are more recent...

Perhaps best known of these is DSL (damn small linux), the idea being to
create an install disk of 50mb (fits on a business card cd rom!)

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

One simple way to setup  a LAMP (Linux: Apache MySQL PHP) server is to
use xampp, it does a complete install of all these things and even gives
you a webpage to configure a few basic things (like MySQL root
password!). Not great for a production security install but ideal for
learning how these things work perhaps. Looks like xampp can be
installed in DSL as well! 

Now where is that old 386 motherboard?!

Mark

On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 00:49 +0000, MJ.Wells wrote:
> You may be interested to know the spec for the web server used in the talk
> tonight.
> 
> It was a Satellite 4010CDT that I had obtained by asking around for anything
> that was surplus to requirements (StR) from all the people that I know who
> are likely to have surplus computing equipment. So it was free, but needed
> looking in the 'mouth' before use.
> 
> The PII 266Mhz machine had been upgraded from the 32Mb it was sold with by
> the addition of 64MB extra making a whopping 96Mb of RAM. (It will take a
> 128Mb board instead when I can find one StR :) bringing it up to 160Mb)
> 
> It had in its past also reputedly been upgraded from a 4Gb hard disk to a
> 20Gb, but someone had downgraded it before I got it and after a happy hour
> of trying to boot it I found that the problem was it had 0Gb of disk - the
> slot was empty!
> 
> I only had to hand a 815Mb drive (yes - they made them that small once, I
> have smaller on the shelf here) so I had to find a Linux distribution that
> would fit in a 711Mb partition and allowing 64Mb for a swap partition. (No -
> I am not sure where the other 30Mb has gone to either.)
> 
> I didn't have the courage to see if I could get Feisty, Hardy, Gutsy or
> Intrepid to play at being one of the seven dwarves so I dug out my old
> distributions to see what might work.
> 
> I found Slackware 3.5, RedHat 4.2 up to 7.1, Mandrake 6.1 and 8.2, and seven
> issues of SuSe between 6.2 and 10.1.
> 
> Slackware I remember needed XFree86 to be hand crafted, which was something
> I could do without. I really wanted something that would load X, apache,
> mysql, PHP and gnome (its smaller than KDE which I prefer) without much
> massaging.
> 
> I didn't want to use SuSe as I had run with that a lot in the past and some
> of the configuration is a bit sticky.
> 
> RedHat has been very safe and the 7.1 disks looked clean and had French
> words on them as I got them off a magazine cover when in France in
> July/August 2001. That might be about the age of the Laptop so could handle
> the hardware OK. I installed this, loading only those applications that I
> really needed. It fitted, with a little room to spare. However, after
> setting up LAMP I found that I had been too harsh in dismissing some apps.
> When I loaded these they wanted to drag in more of X and that took it over
> the drive capacity. I then got in  mess while trying to uninstall apps that
> I felt I had been too kind to the first time. The result was that I had to
> reload Linux from scratch. This time I just couldn't bring the distribution
> down under 711Mb even though I went for twm as the window manager instead of
> gnome.
> 
> I went back to those old distributions. I noticed that Mandrake 8.2 was a
> year later than the RedHat 7.1, came off a Linux Format cover, is
> essentially the from same stable (it also uses rpm packages) and I can't
> remember ever loading Mandrake. So without much expectation of having more
> than a frustrating, but different, experience I loaded it with the same hard
> attitude to Application as before.
> 
> I was surprised to find that it reported that I would only use 380Mb-ish. I
> didn't believe it, suspecting that it would drag some more in as it
> installed, but allowing that it was unlikely that it would drag in over
> 300Mb more I stuck at that and let it install. It was the best installation
> experience I can remember for any Linux distribution I have met. Clean,
> informative and clear. And it worked. After the install I had lots of room
> to go ahead and install phpmyadmin and other apps that were on my 'needed'
> list, but not my 'REALLY needed' list. The final tally comes to about 530Mb
> for a full LAMP server with gnome installed.
> 
> The downside? Mandrake is not updated with security patches, which, I
> suppose, after 6+years is to be expected. And I only have two disks of a
> three disk distribution, the third being all those third party extras.
> However, phpmyadmin, for example, was installed from .tar so there is plenty
> about to make up for the lack of the CD.
> 
> I also had to dig out a PCMCIA Ethernet card and both RedHat and Mandrake
> found it and configured it OK.
> 
> And it worked - we didn't manage to find the HP Pavillion ze4800 (1.8Ghz
> Athalon, 100Gb hard drive, but screen missing) running Ubuntu Intrepid.
> 
> Bear in mind that you would have to go back to Win98 to have any chance of
> getting 'the other OS' on this machine. And when/if you managed (after
> finding all the drivers) you would still have to load the rest of WAMP and
> configure it.
> 
> The loss of laptop screen during the talk is another tale.
> 
> Perhaps you have some old hardware you can get up and running?
> 
> Martin
> 
> 
> 
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