juan.fernandez asks:
"A couple of years ago I found a dust-covered CANON A-200TP/16 'portable' personal computer (9 kg weight, 40MB HD, 4MB RAM, 386SX/16, 2.1 bogomips) which dated from 1988. It was running DOS 4.0, being a completely useless computer. I managed to install Slackware 4.0 and a custom 2.2.13 minimum kernel I compiled on my girlfriend's computer (AMD K6II 300MHZ, kernel 2.2.13, distro Suse 6.4). I just went through the usual steps (make config, make dep, make clean, make zImage) and the kernel compiled and booted fine.
The other day i tried to 'upgrade' to the 2.2.20 kernel since i'm interested in running the latest stable Linux kernel on this machine, but despite the fact that the resulting 2.2.20 zImage is even much smaller than the current, well-working, 2.2.13 zImage, I get 'out of memory' when the computer tries to decompress the kernel image right after lilo has finished loading it." Sounds like he doesn't have much memory to play with and the 2.2.13 image, although larger, fit in the available memory footprint available and the 2.2.20 one just didn't. The simple suggestion would be to move a few things into modules, but could this possibly be a memory bug in 2.2.20 that appears only on certain 386 machines?
"When it was running, I could link the little beast via ppp (its got a serial port, 1KB/sec due the ancient UART chip) and reach the internet, running lynx, pine and ircII happily. After some weeks ofplaying with the toy, I forgot about it...until now.
I made many tries, the box where I compile is a PIII 600MHZ running Suse 7.0 with kernel 2.4.14. Kernels compiled for different boxes in this very same machine work well, but not the 2.2.20 one for the 386sx.
What's wrong? Is there the need for any special 'cross-compiling' hack to the kernel source tree or compiling scripts that was not there in the 2.2.13 times?"
Try using bzImage.... (Score:3, Insightful)
make bzImage
does the magic. If that fails, then try as Cliff suggested to make a few more things modules.
Good luck!
Re:Try using bzImage.... (Score:1)
Re:Try using bzImage.... (Score:1)
Re:Try using bzImage.... (Score:1)
An "Ask Slashdot" with an actual resolution? This must be a sure sign of the apocalypse! I dont think I've ever seen anything like this...Mad props to pwagland!!!
Why upgrade? (Score:2, Insightful)
Secondly have you tried those in between...if this is for fun/experimental I'd try those in between if there IS a reason to upgrade...
Starz McCllelan
Re:Why upgrade? (Score:1)
Why bother? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Ask Slashdot" seems to be, a lot of the time, about chasing your tail and wasting hours of your time figuring out kludgey solutions to silly problems. This is the case here, I think.
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why bother? (Score:1)
This is a bug in 2.2.20 (Score:3, Informative)
Two solutions:
Run 2.2.19, with appropriate security patches.
Use "make bzImage" instead.
Re:This is a bug in 2.2.20 (Score:1)
Re:This is a bug in 2.2.20 (Score:1)
Yes, but the compiler does.
Try a 2.0.x kernel (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously. 2.0.x lacks some features, and is a little slower in some areas, but it came from the day when 386s were not uncommon, so compromises were made to make them work better.
How much I can't say, I just remember that when 2.2 first went stable I was told my 386 is better off staying with 2.0. It still is today, as my mail spool, though I keep it behind a firewall due to age.
Re:Try a 2.0.x kernel (Score:1, Funny)
they didnt even bother to install backdoors - there wasnt enough space on the drive for a backdoor anyway.