Knoppix and Low Memory Machines

[Philip Ogletree]

Hello,

If you are running on a low memory machine (less than 160 MB for KDE and less than x MB for Fluxbox) will Knoppix automatically boot up to a console?

Are there any programs that will output the total memory, speed of processor, and size and number of partitions of the hard drive(s) to the console screen?

Are there any Knoppix Linux environmental variables that can be used to print out the above? What I mean by environmental variables is things like $path that can be used in scripts.

If you use the cheatcode to boot to a console are the video and Xfree also configured during boot up (or are the resources saved by not initializing XFree) so that you could startx (or would init x be better) and go to a graphical environment if there is enough RAM listed in the console?

Thank you
Philip

[UnderScore]

Hello,

If you are running on a low memory machine (less than 160 MB for KDE and less than x MB for Fluxbox) will Knoppix automatically boot up to a console?

I believe the limit is less than 128MB & yes you would receive a message about not enough RAM.

Are there any programs that will output the total memory, speed of processor, and size and number of partitions of the hard drive(s) to the console screen?

free -mt

cat /proc/cpuinfo

dmesg | grep -i hd

fdisk -lh /dev/hda

cfdisk /dev/hda

Are there any Knoppix Linux environmental variables that can be used to print out the above? What I mean by environmental variables is things like $path that can be used in scripts.

Yes. Most of the above commands dump the output to the console (standard output).

If you use the cheatcode to boot to a console are the video and Xfree also configured during boot up (or are the resources saved by not initializing XFree) so that you could startx (or would init x be better) and go to a graphical environment if there is enough RAM listed in the console?

Yes. I frequesntly boot PCs to runlevel 2 (console mode) and then Knoppix will do exactly as you asked & will configure video so that if you need to go to KDE or X, you can just change to runlevel 5.

So boot knoppix with cheatcode:
knoppix 2

Then after knoppix stops loading & drops you to a command prompt, then go to runlevel 5:
init 5