Lenny on CPU VIA 800-Mhz with 256-RAM

[bcostacurta]

Hello,
I'm configuring a thin client to be used as an Internet radio.

I installed Lenny using 'Standard' choice from the taskel.
Other packages are :
- MOC (Music On Console)
- Fluxbox window manager (with base setup)
- conky (to monitor resources)

Hardware is :
- Processor: VIA Eden 800 MHz
- RAM: 256 MByte DDR266 RAM
- Flashcard is 2-Gb
- Graphics card: VIA 2D/3D graphics with MPEG2
- Sound card: AC97 2.2


After Lenny installation packages are +- 390, disk usage is +- 40%

It runs fine but ... with time to time some freezes at level 99%.
By 99% I mean system seems to react (ie. mouse will move somtime) but is in fact totally useless.
When freeze happens conky shows usages approx. less 25% for CPU, less than 75% for RAM.

My questions are :

- are there some logs files where I can trace some problems of resources ..etc.. ?

- this hardware is enough for a Lenny light-weight config ? I will consider yes here...


Note : Yes I know lots of good light-weight distros exist elsewhere in the Open community are they're great, but here I just would like to test Lenny and setup myself as an exercise (and hopefully a fully working Internet radio too).

Thanks for attention.
Bye,
Bruno

[velikij]

Hello,
I'm configuring a thin client to be used as an Internet radio.

I installed Lenny using 'Standard' choice from the taskel.
Other packages are :
- MOC (Music On Console)
- Fluxbox window manager (with base setup)
- conky (to monitor resources)

Hardware is :
- Processor: VIA Eden 800 MHz
- RAM: 256 MByte DDR266 RAM
- Flashcard is 2-Gb
- Graphics card: VIA 2D/3D graphics with MPEG2
- Sound card: AC97 2.2


After Lenny installation packages are +- 390, disk usage is +- 40%

It runs fine but ... with time to time some freezes at level 99%.
By 99% I mean system seems to react (ie. mouse will move somtime) but is in fact totally useless.
When freeze happens conky shows usages approx. less 25% for CPU, less than 75% for RAM.

My questions are :

- are there some logs files where I can trace some problems of resources ..etc.. ?

- this hardware is enough for a Lenny light-weight config ? I will consider yes here...


Note : Yes I know lots of good light-weight distros exist elsewhere in the Open community are they're great, but here I just would like to test Lenny and setup myself as an exercise (and hopefully a fully working Internet radio too).

Thanks for attention.
Bye,
Bruno

Hello Bruno - I have a couple of motherboards with a different 800 mhz VIA cpu - but it has a similar problem. The problem with my computers is that the CPU is ALMOST a 686, but there are one or 2 686 instructions missing. Some installers recognize it as a 686, but when it hits the unimplemented instruction, it freezes or crashes.

You might do a web search to see if that Eden CPU is really a 686. If it isn't, see if there's a way to install using a 486 or 386 kernel. I'm running Ubuntu on my VIA systems, without such a problem.

I did a search just now on Google - search for "VIA Eden cpu i686" - you'll find that your CPU is in the not-quite-686 class, as is my VIA Samuel CPU.

So try Ubuntu or see if you can control what kernel is installed for Debian. A 386 or 486 kernel should work fine.

[r31griffo]

You might do a web search to see if that Eden CPU is really a 686. If it isn't, see if there's a way to install using a 486 or 386 kernel. I'm running Ubuntu on my VIA systems, without such a problem.

I did a search just now on Google - search for "VIA Eden cpu i686" - you'll find that your CPU is in the not-quite-686 class, as is my VIA Samuel CPU.

So try Ubuntu or see if you can control what kernel is installed for Debian. A 386 or 486 kernel should work fine.

There is an option to install 486 kernel with the Lenny expert install.

[velikij]

There is an option to install 486 kernel with the Lenny expert install.

Thanks - I'll have to try the expert install on my VIA systems soon - right now I'm involved in some Ubuntu testing on them. It looks like this should work for Bruno!

[Xheralt]

Hello Bruno - I have a couple of motherboards with a different 800 mhz VIA cpu - but it has a similar problem. The problem with my computers is that the CPU is ALMOST a 686, but there are one or 2 686 instructions missing. Some installers recognize it as a 686, but when it hits the unimplemented instruction, it freezes or crashes.

{snip}

So try Ubuntu or see if you can control what kernel is installed for Debian. A 386 or 486 kernel should work fine.

VIA does seem to specialize in CPU's with instruction sets that aren't *quite* up to their peers; I have an older 800MHz VIA Samuel (Samuel 2?) as my inactive reserve desktop; it's almost impossible to find distros newer than 2008 that work on it. Most current LiveCD's fail at boot with the error "CMOV instruction needed". Currently, I have Ark Linux 2008 installed on it, but I'll have to look into that expert Lenny install, thanx for the tip.

[velikij]

VIA does seem to specialize in CPU's with instruction sets that aren't *quite* up to their peers; I have an older 800MHz VIA Samuel (Samuel 2?) as my inactive reserve desktop; it's almost impossible to find distros newer than 2008 that work on it. Most current LiveCD's fail at boot with the error "CMOV instruction needed". Currently, I have Ark Linux 2008 installed on it, but I'll have to look into that expert Lenny install, thanx for the tip.

I have the same problem with live CDs on the VIA systems - would love to try the current Fedora or Mandriva, but they won't boot for the same reason. Also some won't recognize the on-board display controller. I think it's rather stupid of the distro creators to issue a live CD that doesn't work on 486 systems - after all, it's for a demo, for installation - then you or the installer can select the right kernel. Another thing is throwing out manual selection of screen resolution - some display controller / monitor combos can't be recognized automatically.

[bcostacurta]

Kernel is a 486 from Debian Lenny v5.0.4 via expert installation mode.
uname -r : 2.6.26-2-486

Unfortunately it does not work...

I still have time to time (around once per hour) a quite full freeze.
I can restart the Fluxbox but at a very slow and unusable speed.
RAM and disk are correct with less than 50%.
A top command display a Xorg at 99%.
A problem with Xorg ?
I cannot restart it with crtl+alt+backspace, and have to shutdown system to restart it.

Bye,
Bruno

[unlimitedscolobb]

A problem with Xorg ?
I cannot restart it with crtl+alt+backspace, and have to shutdown system to restart it.

Recent versions of Xorg have the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace-restart feature disabled, so that's okay.

How do you start your X server? You could probably hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get into another virtual terminal and kill X from there to see what happens.

[bcostacurta]

Indeed using Crtl-Alt-F1 opens another virtual console. From there I can restart the Xorg.
From boot xdm is used to start Xorg and Fluxbox.

About my thin client freezing sometimes (the subject of this email thread), I let it running 48-hours during the week-end without any problem.
So for the moment, well .. I don't know.

I'll post more information as soon I can give concrete and precise information.

Reminder : kernel is a 486 as the VIA seems to be not a true 686. However I had one or two freeze last week with this 486 kernel version.

Bye,
Bruno

[bcostacurta]

Hello,

should I try to compile my own kernel ?

Indeed from kernel menuconfig there is a CPU choice VIA processor, which obviously seems to correspond to the VIA Eden processor present in my thin client.

Reminder : I tried the 486 kernel from the Lenny standard installation but I still face some freeze time-to-time. Probably due to some minor CPU instructions differences between both CPU.

Thanks for your advice.
Bye,
Bruno