Installing Debian on Cobalt machines with little memory
Debian's installer requires 64 MB of memory in normal operation on MIPS based Cobalt machines. If your machine has less memory, you can still install Debian but the method may be different. Debian's installer supports a lowmem mode in which less functionality is available (and therefore the installer requires less memory). If you do not have enough memory for the lowmem mode, you can manually install a tar ball.
The following four different methods are available, depending on the amount of memory your Cobalt machine has:
- 64 MB or more: you can follow the normal installation procedure described in my guide.
- 33-63 MB: with this amount of RAM, Debian's installer will automatically enter lowmem level 1. Apart from a warning, you will see little differences to the normal installation procedure.
- 22-32 MB: Debian's installer will run in lowmem level 2. You can mostly follow the normal installation procedure but you have to manually choose some installer modules as described below.
- 21 MB or less: you won't be able to use Debian's installer but you can manually install Debian from a tar ball.
debian-installer lowmem level 2: choosing modules for Cobalt
In Debian's installer lowmem level 2, some installer modules which are needed for the installation on MIPS based Cobalt machines won't be loaded automatically. You therefore have to manually select them but this only adds one more question to the normal installation procedure described in my guide.
There are only three modules you have to select, partman-auto, partman-ext3 and partman-ext2r0. The former module will allow you to partition your disk automatically (and therefore create the partitions needed by the Cobalt firmware) and the latter to modules add support for the ext3 and old ext2 file systems required to boot your Cobalt. Simply select those two modules and continue:
Once these two modules have been loaded, you can follow the normal installation procedure.
Go back to my Debian on Cobalt page.