Memory not enough!

[phiji]

I am just trying out a Knoppix Live CD on my home PC -- AMD Athlon 2 GHz; 128 MB RAM; 40 GB HDD; Win XP Pro. Everything goes fine until I get the message ''Not enough memory to start KDE -- at least 86 MB required" and am greeted with a shell prompt.

Since I am new to Linux, the shell prompt isn't exactly what I want to start with and I am quite lost. Why isn't KDE starting, when I apparently have enough memory. Even the Knoppix official site says 128 MB should be enough for everything to work almost.

Phiji

[Harry Kuhman]

I'm not sure what the problem is, you posted some info but not quite enough to know what is really happening.

Before I get to my best guess of the problem based on the limit info, I want to say that that's an strangely memory starved system. A 2 gig Athlon is not a system I would ever expect to see only 128 megs of memory on, particularly if you have the money to waste on Xp pro. You would have been much better off with XP home and put the money towards more memory. And memory is pretty cheap, I would strongly advise increasing yours. Xp must be thrashing itself to death in 128 megs.

What I'm wondering is, what is your video in this system? If it's on-board video, and not a seperate video card, then it likely is using some of that 128 meg memory for video, strapping your memory requirements even further. And if you are pushing that vidoe to display high res and high color depth then it can really cut into memory, likely getting you below the minimum requirements, A BIOS setting might let you lower your video mode enough to boot, but feeding that thing more memory should be your highest priority, and putting in an actualy video card if there isn't one would be the second enhancement I would consider. Even a dirt cheap modern Nvidia or ATI based video card would improve things greatly.

[phiji]

Hi Harry!

Thank you for your reply which was helpful (despite the apparently inadequate information posted by me about my system), in that it helped me confirm my supicions (the same as yours) about the "low" 128 MB RAM being the culprit.

To answer some of your queries:

1. The 128 MB RAM is shared by onboard video, which takes its share in "Auto" mode (?), according to the BIOS settings. I tried to lower the setting to 8 MB (the lowest allowed by BIOS), but Knoppix still wouldn't come to the KDE desktop environment, repeating the same message about "inadequate memory to start KDE".

2. My exact problem -- "no desktop environment (GUI) at the end of the Knoppix Live CD boot". As I am a Linux newbie, I cannot really proceed meaningfully from the "shell prompt" -- black screen and blinking cursor -- that I get instead of the KDE desktop environment.

As for your wonder about the peculiar system configuration of my PC,

1. Your question may be better answered by Hewlett Packard, which sold me this factory-configured Compaq Presario (IL 1105 model) in mid-2004. To add to your wonder, would you believe it --- there was no CD-writer, just a plain old CD-ROM drive with this system! (I added a CD-writer later)

If I told you that HP retailed this absurdly configured (budget) model in a "third-world nation" (which is where I am), would it help solve some of your puzzlement?

2. Curiously, the factory-issued PC had come with pre-installed Linux -- TurboLinux!

Naturally, since I didn't know the first thing about Linux at the time, I booted it out and installed Windows XP.

I am still a stranger to Linux, but earnestly desirous of giving it a try -- hence the experiment with the Knoppix live CD.


Thank you for your advice once again. I shall push up the RAM on my PC and try Knoppix again.

Phiji

[RandomGoon]

One of the alternate desktop managers? If you look under the documentation section you will find the cheatcodes. Under there it references other desktop managers. With such a low amount of RAM you would be well served to try knoppix desktop=fluxbox or something similar.

HTH,

'Goon

[Harry Kuhman]

'Goon beat me to it, but I was going to suggest that you look at alternate desktops also. I think there is one there available by knoppix desktop=icewm , you can see a full list of cheat codes in the file knoppix-cheatcodes.txt that came down with your BitTorrent download. Another issue is that since you have XP out there and likely one big NTFS partition, Knoppix can't create any swap space. If you have or can make some space on the hard drive, creating a Linux swap partition would be a big help (although real memory is vastly better).

I'm not too shocked that HP shorted you on memory, don't think that this is only something that they do to the "third world", I saw an HP desktop advertised here in the USA a few weeks ago at a killer price. It included XP and was actually being sold for less than XP retails for here. But checking the specs for the system told me that I would never be happy with it, they did as they did with you and used shared memory for the video, and there wasn't even an AGP or PCI-E slot for adding a real video card., so I passed on it.

[RandomGoon]

On the modern HP machines they tend to have 2 partitions which will show up in Knoppix as /hda1 and /hda2. /hda1 should be a small, FAT32 partition that stores the "recovery" software. Now I'm not positive but there should be enough space leftover in that partition to create the swap file for Knoppix. Naturally as /hda1 is the recovery /hda2 would be your working partition and most likely it's formatted NTFS.

WARNING Assuming it exists, if you do something wrong on the recovery partition you might not be able to use the HP recovery feature!

'Goon

[Harry Kuhman]

Naturally as /hda1 is the recovery /hda2 would be your working partition and most likely it's formatted NTFS.

I think you overlooked the previous disclosure that this HP system came with Linux, not XP and that the Linux system was removed and XP added later.

[RandomGoon]

Oops, it's a blonde moment, my appologies for overlooking that little tidbit. Now that you mentioned it I remember he had linux and wiped in favor of XP.

I'm such a blonde...

'Goon

[phiji]

'Goon beat me to it, but I was going to suggest that you look at alternate desktops also. I think there is one there available by knoppix desktop=icewm , you can see a full list of cheat codes in the file knoppix-cheatcodes.txt that came down with your BitTorrent download. Another issue is that since you have XP out there and likely one big NTFS partition, Knoppix can't create any swap space. If you have or can make some space on the hard drive, creating a Linux swap partition would be a big help (although real memory is vastly better).

I'm not too shocked that HP shorted you on memory, don't think that this is only something that they do to the "third world", I saw an HP desktop advertised here in the USA a few weeks ago at a killer price. It included XP and was actually being sold for less than XP retails for here. But checking the specs for the system told me that I would never be happy with it, they did as they did with you and used shared memory for the video, and there wasn't even an AGP or PCI-E slot for adding a real video card., so I passed on it.

Hi Harry,

Thank you very much for your advice. So, a few more doubts (since I am a novice, there are bound to be questions! ):

1. I don't think my Knoppix was a BitTorrent download. In that case, where can I find the cheatcodes?

2. I have plenty of available hard disk space to spare (like you correctly guessed, all NTFS - there are 3 partitions). To create a swap partition, will Knoppix do it automatically, if I leave some unallocated space on the hard drive? Or should I create a partition using a partition manager tool?

Thanks,

Phiji

[Harry Kuhman]

1. I don't think my Knoppix was a BitTorrent download. In that case, where can I find the cheatcodes?

I would have thought that file would be available on the mirrors also, but that you're even asking that suggests that perhaps it is not.

2. I have plenty of available hard disk space to spare (like you correctly guessed, all NTFS - there are 3 partitions). To create a swap partition, will Knoppix do it automatically, if I leave some unallocated space on the hard drive? Or should I create a partition using a partition manager tool?

No Knoppix will not create a swap partition even if there is unused space on the disk(s), you would need to create that partition with a partition tool. Knoppix can create a swap file in a FAT partition, but not a partition.