Minimal Metal: OpenSolaris 2008.11 on 512MB RAM systems

Since OpenSolaris 2008.05 came out seven months ago, a common problem heard on the opensolaris-help mailing list was about the lack of support for systems with 512MB of memory; 768 MB was the minimum needed to complete a 2008.05 install

Who cares about 512MB RAM systems, you may ask? About three years ago, 512MB was a standard memory size shipped with many laptops and desktops. For people wanting to experiment with OpenSolaris on real metal, some of these systems are being dusted off to kick the tires with OpenSolaris. Now, as mentioned by Dave Miner, the installation RAM requirement has been reduced to 512MB, and happily, OpenSolaris 2008.11 installed successfully on two 512MB RAM systems that I tried: a 64-bit Opteron desktop, and a 32-bit laptop.

First, the Opteron (good to see the top(1) program integrated into OpenSolaris!)


And for the Acer Aspire 3000 laptop with a 32-bit CPU (AMD Mobile Sempron 3000+), circa 2004:

pschow@moultrie:~$ smbios -t 1

ID    SIZE TYPE

1     90   SMB_TYPE_SYSTEM (system information)

  Manufacturer: Acer, inc.

  Product: Aspire 3000     

  Version: Not Applicable

  Serial Number: LXA554601A28751F4FM00

  UUID: 20d91515-2edc-d911-90ab-00c09fb4419d

  Wake-Up Event: 0x6 (power switch)

  SKU Number: 

  Family:



pschow@moultrie:~$ smbios -t 4

ID    SIZE TYPE

4     66   SMB_TYPE_PROCESSOR (processor)

  Manufacturer: AMD

  Version: AMD               

  Location Tag: Socket A

  Family: 31 (K6-2+)

  CPUID: 0x78bfbff00010fc0

  Type: 3 (central processor)

  Socket Upgrade: 6 (none)

  Socket Status: Populated

  Processor Status: 1 (enabled)

  Supported Voltages: 1.6V

  External Clock Speed: Unknown

  Maximum Speed: 1800MHz

  Current Speed: 1800MHz

  L1 Cache: 8

  L2 Cache: 9

  L3 Cache: None

By all accounts that I've read, the 2008.11 install should not have even worked on this system because some of the RAM is borrowed by the video hardware, leaving less than 512MB available to the OS. It worked fine for me though, as you can see.

I took a first small step in minimizing these systems by disabling sendmail:

% pfexec svcadm disable sendmail

If you've got other ideas on how to reclaim some RAM and CPU, however small, let me know. I'm sure "Don't run GNOME" would be one of the suggestions, which is actually reasonable if all you want is SSH access into a shell.

How well do these systems work? Don't try to crank up NetBeans or run a production Glassfish server on them, but both systems are fine for exploring the features of OpenSolaris (DTrace, ZFS w/root pools, IPS package management, ZFS Time Slider visualization, etc.) and programming/scripting (C, Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, etc.), especially via the command-line. The 64-bit system is reasonable for casual use of internet apps like web browsing, IM, music playing, etc.

As you get more familiar with OpenSolaris 2008.11, adding more RAM and moving to a 64-bit system would be good advice but 512MB RAM can be your starting point now, if that's what you have.

You can get OpenSolaris 2008.11 here

Posted at 08:52AM Dec 10, 2008 by Peter Schow in Sun  |  Comments[2]