Red Hat 8.0 install says I don't have enough space?

Hello,

I am trying to install Red Hat 8.0 on an old DEC Prioris server (100 MHz
CPU, 32MB RAM, 4 GB SCSI hard drive). First it said something like there
were non standard partitions on my drive -- it had dual boot SCO and Windows
on it before -- so I booted with a DOS floppy and used fdisk to delete the 2
partitions and create 1 big primary DOS partition, after which I ran the
format command to clear the entire hard drive.
Then I started my Red Hat install, using Disk Druid to delete the
partition again and setup a /boot partition of 75M, a swap partition of
256M, and use the rest for the / partition. This leaves a little short of
4G for the / partition...
After giving me a message that there is not enough memory (RAM) so it
needs to partition the swap right now for the install, it asks me all the
questions about the install parameters. I tell it to do a "Custom" install
and "install everything" because there should be enough space on the hard
drive (close to 4GB for /), and then it starts to install the software. But
shortly after, it says it appears there is not enough space on /. It says
it needs 700 and some MB for the install, and it goes into a loop, trying to
install and giving the same message.
Out of curiousity, I restarted the install using all the previous settings
except I tried to use only 128M for swap. And this time it came to the same
message, but said it needs 500 and some MB for the install.
Why does it think there is not enough space? Everything should fit on
that hard drive, right?

Thanks in advance,
Scott Navarre

> I am trying to install Red Hat 8.0 on an old DEC Prioris server (100 MHz
> CPU, 32MB RAM, 4 GB SCSI hard drive).
[snip]
> Why does it think there is not enough space? Everything should fit on
> that hard drive, right?


No. "Everything" is a lot. For RedHat 9, which is smaller than RedHat 8.0
[fewer .rpms, anyway], the listed space is 5.0GB; and sometimes they forget
to add the 5% ext3 reserved space.

Also, only 32MB RAM is too small. It will run, but you _won't_ like it.
For one thing, it will take a couple hours to install. The installer
(anaconda) will want to use at least 68MB of memory [that was for a
"Workstation" install], so you will be page thrashing all the way.
It took me 3 hours with 32MB RAM, P90, buggy CMD640 IDE (1.2MB/s).
It takes several minutes from power-on boot until OpenOffice is ready
for keyboard input under X11. But it shines in text mode (ncurses).

The best use of a 32MB machine is as a client served by the Linux Terminal
Server Project, http://www.ltsp.org . 128MB really is a practical
necessity for running current graphical applications under X11.

Scott M. Navarre wrote:
> I tell it to do a "Custom"
> install and "install everything" because there should be enough space on
> the hard
> drive (close to 4GB for /),

RTFM:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...TEPS-SPACEREQS
It says that "everything" needs at least 4.5 GB of free space.

--
Markku Kolkka
markku.kolkka@iki.fi

> But what are some good things to "cut" so that it will fit on a 4GB drive
> while leaving enough space for the user?
>
> In particular:
> If I don't install all the KDE stuff, will it ever effect me if I only
> ever run Gnome? And what about the development stuff? Some drivers require
> to recompile themselves, right? If I don't have the development stuff, then
> will I still be able to do that?


Do a "[software development] Workstation" install, which needs about
2.6GB for root. Customize by omitting KDE if you wish; that just means
that a KDE game (or other KDE app) won't run. Combined with 100MB for
/boot and 500MB for swap, that will leave 800MB for /home. It seems
that used 9GB or 18GB SCSI drives can still be obtained with some looking.