Installation CentOS 6.6 in graphical mode with 512 MB RAM

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skeptic
Posts: 2
Joined: 2015/04/13 17:06:28

Installation CentOS 6.6 in graphical mode with 512 MB RAM

Post by skeptic » 2015/04/13 17:30:19

Hello,
I want to install the CentOS 6.6 on an old PC Pentium III with 512 MB RAM and assemble soft RAID 1. But the text installer does not have the ability to configure the soft RAID. How do configure the RAID from the console and continue installing it, I do not know. Graphical installer does not start due to limitations 632 MB RAM. My old 815 chipset does not support memory greater than 512 MB. I found a trick to deceive CentOS 6.0 installer: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/cento ... 15367.html
Help me, how to do the same for CentOS 6.6 minimal or configure soft RAID from console? :roll:

gerald_clark
Posts: 10642
Joined: 2005/08/05 15:19:54
Location: Northern Illinois, USA

Re: Installation CentOS 6.6 in graphical mode with 512 MB RA

Post by gerald_clark » 2015/04/13 18:22:14

Run something else more suitable to ancient hardware.

roklebor
Posts: 55
Joined: 2012/04/15 06:58:35

Re: Installation CentOS 6.6 in graphical mode with 512 MB RA

Post by roklebor » 2015/04/28 22:00:19

I did it this way:
1. Booted CentOS Live CD.
2. Partitioned and "formatted" the drive. Mainly the swap partition(s).
3. Immediately mounted them, so that the Live system can use them (installer will not run out of memory).
4. Patched the installer hard-coded memory checks, as it is described on link in your post.
5. Started the installer and installed the system.

I did it exactly on the hardware you described (P !!!, 512 MB RAM, i815 chipset). It is stable and reliable even in spite I replaced the CentOS kernel by a long-term nonPAE one (for a little performance gain).

With RAID be carefull with manually formatting it and aligning the partitions with block size. It can make a really big difference in a disk performance.

Good luck.
Last edited by roklebor on 2015/05/08 22:21:25, edited 1 time in total.

roklebor
Posts: 55
Joined: 2012/04/15 06:58:35

Re: Installation CentOS 6.6 in graphical mode with 512 MB RA

Post by roklebor » 2015/04/28 22:16:51

And one more thing to note. Use 32 bit CentOS for that hardware, not a 64 bit.

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