Ram requirements..

[Eric Dorman eld@jewel.ucsd.edu]

> From digbyt@acm.org Tue May 20 10:20:53 1997
> X-Authentication-Warning: claven.cse.psu.edu: majordom set sender to owner-9fans using -f

> Can anyone give any insights into minimum memory requirments for
> running the Intel version of Plan 9? 
> 
> I recently tried installing it on an old toshiba laptop with 4Mb
> of ram, and the installation processed failed when trying to decompress
> and copy the floppy system onto the hard disk.

I hvae been able to install the pcdist on a machine with 5Mb, so
4Mb is not too far away from working.  Changing the kernelpercent
param in plan9.ini (as suggested by bischof@informatik..) after 
installing the first floppy and before installing the 3floppysystem
might get you under the wire.

Since there doesn't seem to be source for vdsqueeze anywhere in
the CDROM tree (nor a binary for that matter) I rebuilt my installation
pcdist with gzip/gunzip so I can floppyinstall machines with all
the patches.  I've installed the pcdist on several machines
that way, but have never tried a machine with so little ram.  It might
be that vdexpand uses more memory than gunzip (err, gzip -d); I haven't
tried the old 5Mb machine using the gzipped pcdist floppies though.
I'll try that tonight.

> I was previously using the machine for Unix/X and Windows 3.1, which while
> not fast, was quite usable. I find it very hard to believe that Plan 9 is
> less efficient in memory use than these two...

Someone just has to sit down and make it work.  It should be possible
to make, for example, kernelpercent, a floating parameter rather
than a hardcoded limit.

>Thanks,
>DigbyT

Regards,

Eric Dorman
Department of Radiology
University of California at San Diego
edorman@tanya.ucsd.edu