Does anyone know what are minimal ram requirements for doing something
useful with Alpine? I don't mean absolutely bare minimum to run, but
something like a minimum recommended amount? I ask because I was adding
Alpine to some wikis listing lightweight or run-from-ram distros, and
some of these enumerate what the distros claim their ram requirements to
be. (Such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions_that_run_from_RAM.)
But I couldn't find any discussion of this anywhere for Alpine. If I
boot from an ISO (on a USB stick) and don't do anything further, about
47 or 59 MB of RAM are in use. But I'd be surprised if it were possible
to usefully use Alpine on a machine with only 64 MB of ram. I expect 512
MB of ram is plenty. In between??? I don't know. Does anyone have
relevant experience?
--
Dubiousjim
dubiousjim@gmail.com
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> I guess it depends of the usage, but it can be useful even with only 64 MB.
I'm surprised it needs this much ram to be honest but I guess it's all
the drivers in the kernel and could be easily reduced?
OpenBSD can handle a surprising number of packets as a firewall with
just 32MB of ram. Atleast I believe that's still true.
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_______________________________________________________________________
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512MB would definitely be plenty. My home router has Alpine and is running
a host of networking things, including: several separate VLANs / subnets,
firewall, OpenVPN server, IPSec / GRE / Racoon / OpenNHRP mesh network,
dnsmasq for internal DNS, and hostapd to act as a wireless access point.
That's running on this an Alix 2D3 [1] (500MHz AMD Geode, 256MB RAM).
Alpine on CF card, run from RAM setup. I'm typically using less than 50%
of memory (so I guess you could theoretically squeeze all that onto 128MB
RAM).
[1] - http://store.netgate.com/ALIX2D3-P43C69.aspx
rt01 [~]# uname -a
Linux rt01 3.3.4-grsec #1-Alpine SMP Sat Apr 28 13:19:55 UTC 2012 i586 Linux
rt01 [~]# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 254920 110972 143948 0 1708
-/+ buffers: 109264 145656
Swap: 0 0 0
On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 3:28 AM, Dubiousjim
<lists+alpine-devel@jimpryor.net>wrote:
> Does anyone know what are minimal ram requirements for doing something> useful with Alpine? I don't mean absolutely bare minimum to run, but> something like a minimum recommended amount? I ask because I was adding> Alpine to some wikis listing lightweight or run-from-ram distros, and> some of these enumerate what the distros claim their ram requirements to> be. (Such as> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions_that_run_from_RAM> .)>> But I couldn't find any discussion of this anywhere for Alpine. If I> boot from an ISO (on a USB stick) and don't do anything further, about> 47 or 59 MB of RAM are in use. But I'd be surprised if it were possible> to usefully use Alpine on a machine with only 64 MB of ram. I expect 512> MB of ram is plenty. In between??? I don't know. Does anyone have> relevant experience?>> --> Dubiousjim> dubiousjim@gmail.com>>> ---> Unsubscribe: alpine-devel+unsubscribe@lists.alpinelinux.org> Help: alpine-devel+help@lists.alpinelinux.org> --->>
Hello,
I guess it depends of the usage, but it can be useful even with only 64 MB.
Here are some current stats from my master "AlpineDirectory" system (master
DNS+DHCP+master LDAP+master Kerberos+NTP) running on a Soekris net4501 :
cerbere:~# uname -a
Linux cerbere 2.6.32.15-grsec #8-Alpine SMP Wed Jun 16 11:26:43 UTC 2010
i486 GNU/Linux
cerbere:~# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 51876 48744 3132 0 700
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 51876 48744 3132
cerbere:~# uptime
12:50:57 up 429 days, 2:23, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
The same for its slave (slave DNS+slave LDAP+slave Kerberos+NTP+Squid) :
charon:~# uname -a
Linux charon 2.6.32.15-grsec #8-Alpine SMP Wed Jun 16 11:26:43 UTC 2010
i486 GNU/Linux
charon:~# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 51876 49068 2808 0 36
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 51876 49068 2808
charon:~# uptime
12:57:09 up 429 days, 2:30, load average: 0.06, 0.01, 0.00
Regards,
Cédric Schieli
2012/11/9 Dubiousjim <lists+alpine-devel@jimpryor.net>
> Does anyone know what are minimal ram requirements for doing something> useful with Alpine? I don't mean absolutely bare minimum to run, but> something like a minimum recommended amount? I ask because I was adding> Alpine to some wikis listing lightweight or run-from-ram distros, and> some of these enumerate what the distros claim their ram requirements to> be. (Such as> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions_that_run_from_RAM> .)>> But I couldn't find any discussion of this anywhere for Alpine. If I> boot from an ISO (on a USB stick) and don't do anything further, about> 47 or 59 MB of RAM are in use. But I'd be surprised if it were possible> to usefully use Alpine on a machine with only 64 MB of ram. I expect 512> MB of ram is plenty. In between??? I don't know. Does anyone have> relevant experience?>> --> Dubiousjim> dubiousjim@gmail.com>>> ---> Unsubscribe: alpine-devel+unsubscribe@lists.alpinelinux.org> Help: alpine-devel+help@lists.alpinelinux.org> --->>
On 09/11/12 13:13, Kevin Chadwick wrote:
>> I guess it depends of the usage, but it can be useful even with only 64 MB.> > I'm surprised it needs this much ram to be honest but I guess it's all> the drivers in the kernel and could be easily reduced?> > OpenBSD can handle a surprising number of packets as a firewall with> just 32MB of ram. Atleast I believe that's still true.
This is with Alpine Linux running on RAM as file backend, which means
you have all the filesystem in RAM and the kernel. I guess you mean
OpenBSD only needs 32MB when running from HDD, if you install to HDD I
guess Alpine is going to be fine with 32MB (although I haven't tested
it, and I'm not sure if there's some kind of restriction on the minimum
RAM the linux kernel needs).
Roger.
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[alpine-devel] Alpine on Alix (was: Minimal ram requirements?)
Hi Jeremy,
Some time ago, I tried to get Alpine running on an Alix 2C3 system,
which is nearly identical to the 2D3, but the kernel (I suppose 2.6) was
crashing constantly. Most crashes occurred when I started larger
applications like Asterisk. BIOS version was 0.99h, the latest version
available, and I tested with MFGPT workaround enabled and disabled.
May I ask which kernel you are using? Does Alpine require certain kernel
configuration parameters to run stable on Alix boards?
I am quite sure my Alix board is _not_ defective, because there have bin
no issues running Voyage Linux and fli4l. Due to the problems mentioned,
the Alix was replaced by a considerably more powerful Intel DN2800MT,
but I would like to reactivate the Alix board for supplementary purposes.
Thanks and Kind Regards, Tiger
Am 2012-11-09 19:55, schrieb Jeremy Thomerson:
> 512MB would definitely be plenty. My home router has Alpine and is> running a host of networking things, including: several separate VLANs> / subnets, firewall, OpenVPN server, IPSec / GRE / Racoon / OpenNHRP> mesh network, dnsmasq for internal DNS, and hostapd to act as a> wireless access point.>> That's running on this an Alix 2D3 [1] (500MHz AMD Geode, 256MB RAM).> Alpine on CF card, run from RAM setup. I'm typically using less than> 50% of memory (so I guess you could theoretically squeeze all that> onto 128MB RAM).>> [1] - http://store.netgate.com/ALIX2D3-P43C69.aspx>> rt01 [~]# uname -a> Linux rt01 3.3.4-grsec #1-Alpine SMP Sat Apr 28 13:19:55 UTC 2012 i586> Linux> rt01 [~]# free> total used free shared buffers> Mem: 254920 110972 143948 0 1708> -/+ buffers: 109264 145656> Swap: 0 0 0>>> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 3:28 AM, Dubiousjim> <lists+alpine-devel@jimpryor.net> <lists+alpine-devel@jimpryor.net>> wrote:>> Does anyone know what are minimal ram requirements for doing something> useful with Alpine? I don't mean absolutely bare minimum to run, but> something like a minimum recommended amount? I ask because I was> adding> Alpine to some wikis listing lightweight or run-from-ram distros, and> some of these enumerate what the distros claim their ram> requirements to> be. (Such as> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions_that_run_from_RAM.)>> But I couldn't find any discussion of this anywhere for Alpine. If I> boot from an ISO (on a USB stick) and don't do anything further, about> 47 or 59 MB of RAM are in use. But I'd be surprised if it were> possible> to usefully use Alpine on a machine with only 64 MB of ram. I> expect 512> MB of ram is plenty. In between??? I don't know. Does anyone have> relevant experience?>> --> Dubiousjim> dubiousjim@gmail.com <dubiousjim@gmail.com>>>> ---> Unsubscribe: alpine-devel+unsubscribe@lists.alpinelinux.org> <alpine-devel%2Bunsubscribe@lists.alpinelinux.org>> Help: alpine-devel+help@lists.alpinelinux.org> <alpine-devel%2Bhelp@lists.alpinelinux.org>> --->>
Re: [alpine-devel] Alpine on Alix (was: Minimal ram requirements?)
On Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:51:21 +0100 Der Tiger
<der.tiger.alpine@arcor.de> wrote:
> Some time ago, I tried to get Alpine running on an Alix 2C3 system,> which is nearly identical to the 2D3, but the kernel (I suppose 2.6)> was crashing constantly. Most crashes occurred when I started larger> applications like Asterisk. BIOS version was 0.99h, the latest version> available, and I tested with MFGPT workaround enabled and disabled.
I have multiple ALIX 2d3 boxes here, and most of them run Alpine 2.4.x
and Asterisk 10. No problems.
> May I ask which kernel you are using? Does Alpine require certain> kernel configuration parameters to run stable on Alix boards?
I'm on kernel 3.3.x. and 3.4.x mostly.
No special configuration needed. Except for the one box where I use the
speaker output as GPIO. But even on that box it's done with sysfs
calls instead of boot params.
> I am quite sure my Alix board is _not_ defective, because there have> bin no issues running Voyage Linux and fli4l. Due to the problems> mentioned, the Alix was replaced by a considerably more powerful> Intel DN2800MT, but I would like to reactivate the Alix board for> supplementary purposes.
- Timo
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Re: [alpine-devel] Alpine on Alix (was: Minimal ram requirements?)
Der,
I had to have help getting my Alix going, too. nangel gave me a
syslinux.cfg file that made mine work. After making my bootable CF card, I
edited the file and then installed the CF card in the Alix and it worked.
Here's the file:
rt01 [/media/sda1]# cat syslinux.cfg
serial 0 38400
timeout 20
prompt 1
default grsec
label grsec
kernel /boot/grsec
append initrd=/boot/grsec.gz alpine_dev=sda1:vfat
modules=loop,squashfs,cramfs,sd-mod,usb-storage console=ttyS0,38400
On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Timo Teras <timo.teras@iki.fi> wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:51:21 +0100 Der Tiger> <der.tiger.alpine@arcor.de> wrote:>> > Some time ago, I tried to get Alpine running on an Alix 2C3 system,> > which is nearly identical to the 2D3, but the kernel (I suppose 2.6)> > was crashing constantly. Most crashes occurred when I started larger> > applications like Asterisk. BIOS version was 0.99h, the latest version> > available, and I tested with MFGPT workaround enabled and disabled.>> I have multiple ALIX 2d3 boxes here, and most of them run Alpine 2.4.x> and Asterisk 10. No problems.>> > May I ask which kernel you are using? Does Alpine require certain> > kernel configuration parameters to run stable on Alix boards?>> I'm on kernel 3.3.x. and 3.4.x mostly.>> No special configuration needed. Except for the one box where I use the> speaker output as GPIO. But even on that box it's done with sysfs> calls instead of boot params.>> > I am quite sure my Alix board is _not_ defective, because there have> > bin no issues running Voyage Linux and fli4l. Due to the problems> > mentioned, the Alix was replaced by a considerably more powerful> > Intel DN2800MT, but I would like to reactivate the Alix board for> > supplementary purposes.>> - Timo>
ReHi Jeremy,
Thank you for your mail and the syslinux.cfg enclosed!
>From what I gather from your syslinux.cfg, it looks like the serial
interface on Alix boards is causing problems with Alpine. I'd never have
guessed that.
I'm going to give it a try as soon as my Alix is available for testing,
again.
Kind Regards, Tiger
ps. Thanks to Timo for his input and to Nangel for his assistance, too!
Am 2012-11-13 15:27, schrieb Jeremy Thomerson:
> Der,> > I had to have help getting my Alix going, too. nangel gave me a> syslinux.cfg file that made mine work. After making my bootable CF> card, I edited the file and then installed the CF card in the Alix and> it worked. Here's the file:> > rt01 [/media/sda1]# cat syslinux.cfg> serial 0 38400> timeout 20> prompt 1> default grsec> label grsec> kernel /boot/grsec> append initrd=/boot/grsec.gz alpine_dev=sda1:vfat> modules=loop,squashfs,cramfs,sd-mod,usb-storage console=ttyS0,38400> > > > On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Timo Teras <timo.teras@iki.fi> <timo.teras@iki.fi>> wrote:> > On Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:51:21 +0100 Der Tiger> <der.tiger.alpine@arcor.de <der.tiger.alpine@arcor.de>> wrote:> > > Some time ago, I tried to get Alpine running on an Alix 2C3 system,> > which is nearly identical to the 2D3, but the kernel (I suppose 2.6)> > was crashing constantly. Most crashes occurred when I started larger> > applications like Asterisk. BIOS version was 0.99h, the latest version> > available, and I tested with MFGPT workaround enabled and disabled.> > I have multiple ALIX 2d3 boxes here, and most of them run Alpine 2.4.x> and Asterisk 10. No problems.> > > May I ask which kernel you are using? Does Alpine require certain> > kernel configuration parameters to run stable on Alix boards?> > I'm on kernel 3.3.x. and 3.4.x mostly.> > No special configuration needed. Except for the one box where I use the> speaker output as GPIO. But even on that box it's done with sysfs> calls instead of boot params.> > > I am quite sure my Alix board is _not_ defective, because there have> > bin no issues running Voyage Linux and fli4l. Due to the problems> > mentioned, the Alix was replaced by a considerably more powerful> > Intel DN2800MT, but I would like to reactivate the Alix board for> > supplementary purposes.> > - Timo> >
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