Hi, I'm a complete newbie to Linux and thought trying to put Slackware on a
486-66 with 16K RAM would be an 'interesting' project. Ok, now stop
laughing.

I decided to do a full install (ever the optimist) and everything seemed to
be going well. I created boot floppies and got Slackware onto cd's and it
seemed to install all the packages. After it had finished installing files I
got a message

'Updating Gnome Documention
Please wait while we run scrollkeeper-update to bring the scrollkeeper
database up to date. This database is used by the GNOME help browser to
locate documention.'

That ran for a short while then a message appeared underneath -

'__alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed (gfp=0x1d2/0)
VM: killing process scrollkeeper-up
Killed'

It has been like that for about an hour now but the hd is still working
away. I don't want to switch it off because it took so long to get this far
but if it's stuck in a loop then I have no choice. Anyone else had this
experience? Is there anyway I can check or skip whatever is running now?

Help!!!
Hi, I'm a complete newbie to Linux and thought trying to put Slackware on a
486-66 with 16K RAM would be an 'interesting' project. Ok, now stop
laughing.

I decided to do a full install (ever the optimist) and everything seemed to
be going well. I created boot floppies and got Slackware onto cd's and it
seemed to install all the packages. After it had finished installing files I
got a message

'Updating Gnome Documention
Please wait while we run scrollkeeper-update to bring the scrollkeeper
database up to date. This database is used by the GNOME help browser to
locate documention.'

That ran for a short while then a message appeared underneath -

'__alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed (gfp=0x1d2/0)
VM: killing process scrollkeeper-up
Killed'

It has been like that for about an hour now but the hd is still working
away. I don't want to switch it off because it took so long to get this far
but if it's stuck in a loop then I have no choice. Anyone else had this
experience? Is there anyway I can check or skip whatever is running now?

Help!!!

Is ok - turned out just to be a very slow process!! Now booted for the first
time and looks ok (so far). I can see me putting this on my main box to see
it in it's full glory but want to experiment and learn on a system where I
won't do too much damage

Don't know why my previous message appeared twice - sorry though!!


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On Friday 17 September 2004 04:42 pm, Graham Watson did deign to grace us
with the following:
[installing Slack on a legacy box]
> Is ok - turned out just to be a very slow process!! Now booted for the
> first time and looks ok (so far). I can see me putting this on my main box
> to see it in it's full glory but want to experiment and learn on a system
> where I won't do too much damage
>
> Don't know why my previous message appeared twice - sorry though!!
>
Just out of curiosity, would you copy/paste your output of df here?
Maybe free and fdisk while you're at it. And maybe /proc/cpuinfo.
:-)

Thanks!
Rich

"Graham Watson" typed:
> Is ok - turned out just to be a very slow process!! Now booted for the first
> time and looks ok (so far). I can see me putting this on my main box to see
> it in it's full glory but want to experiment and learn on a system where I
> won't do too much damage

Yes. The `scrollkeeper-update' takes its time. I don't quite remember
how long it took on one of the P-Is (100MHz) in the Linux lab in my
University on which I was installing Slackware-9.1, but I remember
leaving that system to itself to take scheduled classes. When I came
back after few hours, `scrollkeeper-update' had finished updating itself.

--
Ayaz Ahmed Khan, <http://fast-ce.org/linux>
"Q: What does FAQ stand for?
A: We are Frequently Asked this Question, and thus far have no idea."

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 23:32:40 +0100, Graham Watson wrote:
> Hi, I'm a complete newbie to Linux and thought trying to put Slackware on a
> 486-66 with 16K RAM would be an 'interesting' project. Ok, now stop
> laughing.
>
> I decided to do a full install (ever the optimist) and everything seemed to
> be going well.

It is not really useful to install GNOME and KDE on a 486 with 16MB RAM
. Scrollkeeper is part of the GNOME diskset, and it even takes some time
on modern PCs to complete.

With kind regards,
Daniel de Kok

"Rich Grise" <null@example.net> wrote in message
news:V4S2d.382$2A1.134@trnddc08...
> On Friday 17 September 2004 04:42 pm, Graham Watson did deign to grace us
> with the following:
> [installing Slack on a legacy box]
> > Is ok - turned out just to be a very slow process!! Now booted for the
> > first time and looks ok (so far). I can see me putting this on my main
box
> > to see it in it's full glory but want to experiment and learn on a
system
> > where I won't do too much damage
> >
> > Don't know why my previous message appeared twice - sorry though!!
> >
> Just out of curiosity, would you copy/paste your output of df here?
> Maybe free and fdisk while you're at it. And maybe /proc/cpuinfo.
> :-)
>
> Thanks!
> Rich
>

Just as soon as I find out how!


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"Daniel de Kok" <daniel@nowhere.nospam> wrote in message
newsan.2004.09.18.10.32.01.185513@nowhere.nospam ...
> On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 23:32:40 +0100, Graham Watson wrote:
> > Hi, I'm a complete newbie to Linux and thought trying to put Slackware
on a
> > 486-66 with 16K RAM would be an 'interesting' project. Ok, now stop
> > laughing.
> >
> > I decided to do a full install (ever the optimist) and everything seemed
to
> > be going well.
>
> It is not really useful to install GNOME and KDE on a 486 with 16MB RAM
> . Scrollkeeper is part of the GNOME diskset, and it even takes some time
> on modern PCs to complete.
>
> With kind regards,
> Daniel de Kok

I appreciate that but being a complete newbie I just had to 'try it and
see'. Didn't really expect it to work too well, just a bit of
experimentation. It's a lot more complicated than I thought though. How the
devil do you remember where all the config files are? That's all I seem to
be doing at the moment, Googling and editing! I guess I'll become familiar
with them though


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On Sat, 18 Sep 2004, Graham Watson wrote:
> "Daniel de Kok" <daniel@nowhere.nospam> wrote in message
>> On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 23:32:40 +0100, Graham Watson wrote:
>>> Hi, I'm a complete newbie to Linux and thought trying to put Slackware
>>> 486-66 with 16K RAM would be an 'interesting' project. Ok, now stop
>>> laughing.
> I appreciate that but being a complete newbie I just had to 'try it and
> see'. Didn't really expect it to work too well, just a bit of
> experimentation. It's a lot more complicated than I thought though. How the
> devil do you remember where all the config files are? That's all I seem to
> be doing at the moment, Googling and editing! I guess I'll become familiar
> with them though

excellent.
seems to me that Graham has what it takes to become a slacker, already
exhibiting the principles of GAFC and STFW. add a little RTFM and i
think he'll be at home with it.

486/66 is fine for CLI and text based applications, but if
there is -any- way to increase ram to 24 or 32MB, you will
find significant improvement. (below 24MB, the os will rely
upon swap to get anything done. this can be painful).

-most- configuration files are found in the /etc file tree,
tho there may be an infinite number of exceptions :*)

an extremely useful exercise for new slackers is to browse thru
/etc , looking into all the many files there, just to become a
bit more familiar with what things look like. one can usually
find juicy details about each using the man command.

it can be a confusing mass, so don't sweat the details, it will
all become more familiar after a while, and the details can be
found later as needed.

ls -lt /etc will give you a list sorted with most reccently
modified ones at the top, and these usually are the more
interesting ones.

another good place to browse is the /proc file tree, where linux
reports many interesting details about what this particular instance
of linux is.

the /var/log/packages/ file tree is another good place to explore.
each file here lists all the files installed for any given package.
this can help clue you in to what control files affect which package,
and where they can be found.

and of course, /usr/doc/ .

okay now, have fun !









--
Fire the Liars - Impeach Bush and Cheney!
Prosecute the criminals - Indict Rumsfeld and Ashcroft!
Corruption starts at the top.

William Hunt, Portland Oregon USA

On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 11:36:11 +0100,
Graham Watson <noone@nosuchdomain.co.zz> wrote:
> "Rich Grise" <null@example.net> wrote:

>> Just out of curiosity, would you copy/paste your output of df here?
>> Maybe free and fdisk while you're at it. And maybe /proc/cpuinfo.
>> :-)

> Just as soon as I find out how!

For starters, here's how to get the output of those commands at a
command prompt:
$ df -h
$ free
$ /sbin/fdisk -l
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

Copying and pasting may be different to how you're used to, depending on
the terminal and window manager you're using. Unless another way is
obvious, try selecting the text with the left mouse button and pasting
with the right or middle button.

For a quick introduction to the command line, typing 'man 1 intro' will
give you a quick guide.

--
Mark Hill
Email (Just for Fun):
echo zbp.yvnzt.yyvuez | rot13 | rev | sed s@\\.@\\@@

"Mark Hill" <mrhill@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:2004-09-18T16-32-12@heaney.example.org...
> On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 11:36:11 +0100,
> Graham Watson <noone@nosuchdomain.co.zz> wrote:
> > "Rich Grise" <null@example.net> wrote:
>
> >> Just out of curiosity, would you copy/paste your output of df here?
> >> Maybe free and fdisk while you're at it. And maybe /proc/cpuinfo.
> >> :-)
>
> > Just as soon as I find out how!
>
> For starters, here's how to get the output of those commands at a
> command prompt:
> $ df -h
> $ free
> $ /sbin/fdisk -l
> $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
>
> Copying and pasting may be different to how you're used to, depending on
> the terminal and window manager you're using. Unless another way is
> obvious, try selecting the text with the left mouse button and pasting
> with the right or middle button.
>
> For a quick introduction to the command line, typing 'man 1 intro' will
> give you a quick guide.
>
> --
> Mark Hill
> Email (Just for Fun):
> echo zbp.yvnzt.yyvuez | rot13 | rev | sed s@\\.@\\@@

I'm smoking twice as much, my wife's leaving me and the dog is starving to
death but hey - I'm getting somewhere! As everyone predicted it's going to
be a console only box. I tried loading KDE and it did load and run (bless
it) but it was like trying to run a Rolls Royce with a lawnmower engine.
From clicking the toolbar button to it actually bringing up the menu took
about 20 mins. But it's fascinating! The joys of getting it to participate
on the network and Samba which I can only get half working. (I can access
the windows machines with smbclient but can't access anything on the
Slackware machine. I can see it in the Workgroup but when I try to access it
I get a 'Semaphore' timeout error.) Will plug away with it though.

Thanks for all the encouragement and pointers and I hope you don't mind if I
ask some daft questions from time to time.

Here's the requested logs (btw I was impressed that it detected all of my HD
without any help or patches)

graham@gateway:~$ df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 19G 2.7G 15G 16% /
/dev/hda4 54G 148K 51G 1% /usr/local
/dev/hda1 42M 3.1M 36M 8% /boot



graham@gateway:~$ free

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 13084 12772 312 0 400 4912
-/+ buffers/cache: 7460 5624
Swap: 999928 840 999088


graham@gateway:~$ /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
32 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77530 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2016 * 512 = 1032192 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 48 48352+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 49 19424 19531008 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 19425 20416 999936 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 20417 77530 57570912 83 Linux



graham@gateway:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 4
model : 3
model name : 486 DX/2
stepping : 6
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme pse
bogomips : 33.17





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