loading into RAM on a 128M RAM machine?

[dr_spork]

So I just upgraded from 2.15CE to 3.01 NOP on my little laptop with 128M RAM. The problem is though, although the new version is tons more functional and much prettier, it's really sluggish in comparison. I'm guessing this is because it isn't loading into RAM.

I looked on Barry's howpuppyworks.html, and he pastes a few lines of /sbin/init where it says:

Code: Select all

#total ram, less any shared video...
PCRAMSIZE=`free | head -n 2 | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 3 -d " "`
SIZEFILLK=`expr $PCRAMSIZE \/ 2` #half of ram.
#for 128M PC, have to tweak this to get pup_xxx.sfs to load into ram...
if [ $SIZEFILLK -gt 50000 ];then
 [ $SIZEFILLK -lt 70000 ] && SIZEFILLK=71680 #70M.
fi
PHYSICALFILLK="$SIZEFILLK"

and what interests me is that fourth line--how exactly can I tweak this file so that it loads pup_301.sfs into RAM? I can get to the file to edit it, but I'm not too fluent in code like this and I can barely tell what any of this means. Can somebody help me with this?

[alienjeff]

You may want to bookmark and follow this related posting and thread:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=24633

And remember that some sluggish response may be due to the vintage of the processor in your computer.

[dr_spork]

Later versions of Puppy use more memory, that makes sense. But according to this chart the memory used by Puppy 2.15 was still more than I 128M, and it loaded in RAM fine (presumably with the help of the swap drive).

My problem is that my 3.01 NOP isn't loading into RAM. True, vanilla 3.01 is pretty big in comparison, but 3.01 NOP is a lot smaller (doesn't contain half the apps the regular 3.01 has, and uses opera instead of seamonkey), so it should be able to load into ram like 2.15 did, maybe with a little bit of tweaking.

Thing is, I have the code right there, I just don't know what to do with it to get it to load at least part of my system into RAM.

[alienjeff]

Have you compared highlighted portion of the /sbin/init files for 2.15CE, 3.01 and NOP-3.01? Doing so may reveal a clue.

[dr_spork]

It seems that it might be a little over my head to edit the init file, then repackage initrd and everything. Plus for some strange reason I can't seem to read the archive within the initrd.gz file anymore. I tried swapping in 2.15's initrd.gz in place of 3.01's, but that doesn't work at all apparently. I wish there were just a boot param that would just force 3.01NOP to load (mostly) into RAM with 128M.

[kirk]

Might want to look at this:


http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=23381

[dr_spork]

So I ended up getting frustrated trying to tweak files within the initrd.gz, and decided to do a full HD install just as an experiment. Much to my surprise, it runs a whole lot faster. What used to be a 45-second load time for Opera is now 6 seconds, and what used to be 20 seconds for Abiword is now 3. So now I don't really have to worry as much about loading stuff into RAM. Though it is a nice idea, and I still wish I knew how to do it. If I ever get around to messing around with it I'll definitely give those scripts a try on that page kirk, thanx.

[alienjeff]

Another satisfied full HD install convert!

[cf13]

So I ended up getting frustrated trying to tweak files within the initrd.gz, and decided to do a full HD install just as an experiment. Much to my surprise, it runs a whole lot faster

dr_spork,

I did a full install just 2 days ago, and I'm totally agree with you. Lately puppy was a terrible swapping noise, I even returned to debian, and to my surprise was faster than puppy, that's why I installed to hard drive.


So alienjeff, I think I'm another convert!