Subject: [alpine-devel] Minimal ram requirements?

From: Dubiousjim <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 04:28:02 -0500

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
[email-masked]

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From: Cédric Schieli <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 13:01:17 +0100

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 <[email-masked]>

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From: Kevin Chadwick <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 12:13:51 +0000

> 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.

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________

'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work
together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface'

(Doug McIlroy)
_______________________________________________________________________

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From: Roger Pau Monné <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 13:30:56 +0100

> 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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From: Dubiousjim <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 09:52:22 -0500

Thanks!

-- 
Dubiousjim
[email-masked]

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From: Jeremy Thomerson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 12:55:16 -0600

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

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From: Der Tiger <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:51:21 +0100

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.
>
>  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).
>
> <[email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
>
>
>     ---
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>
>     ---
>
>

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From: Timo Teras <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 23:30:14 +0200

On Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:51:21 +0100 Der Tiger
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> which is nearly identical to the 2D3, but the kernel (I suppose 2.6)
> was crashing constantly. Most crashes occurred when I started larger

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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From: Jeremy Thomerson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 08:27:41 -0600

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

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From: Der Tiger <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:11:18 +0100

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:
> 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:
> 
> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Timo Teras <[email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 
>     <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 

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