> >
> > I found the following section of code back in patch-2.1.21:
> >
> > - if (EXT_MEM_K < 1024) error("Less than 2MB of memory.\n");
> > + if (EXT_MEM_K < 1024) error("<2M of mem\n");
> >
> > Can someone change the "<2M of mem" to "Less than 2MB of memory."? The
> > former error message is somewhat annoying to new users who wish
> > to run Linux on their old 386/16 with 1MB of RAM.
>
> You wouldn't perhaps be one of the dirtbag "suits" responsible for the
> death of:
>
> printk("lp%d on fire\n", minor);
>
> now, would you? ;) Geez, even the latest Macs are happy to pop up
> a window saying nothing more than "System Error -0132154. OK?" prior
> to rebooting on you.
>
> Besides, how many people do you know of that try to run linux on
> sx16 boxes with only 1MB of RAM? You would have to be pretty
> dain-bramaged to try and load anything modern on a box with only
> 1MB of RAM, and expect it to work. (However, I will admit to booting
> linux on boxes with less than 1MB of RAM, but it is pretty slow.)
I *think* that when I first started using Linux I used a 386/20 with *2*
MB of RAM. It might have been four, though. I was amazed, coming from the
DOS/Winblows world, how simply fast it was.
It didn't take me much routing through the source, much less thought, to
figure out why. Windows just has overhead out the nose. Now X was
pathetically slow on that machine. I think X follows a kind of exponential
curve; before a certain point it's just annoying, and after that point it
flies like it does now on my P133.
As to error messages, I really wish we would finalize some way to do
multiple sets of error messages. I wouldn't mind messages like "lp%d is on
fire" while some people apparently would. So we either write our sarcastic
error messages as default in the code and let a user-level daemon make
sense of them (put a numerical tag in there), or we write "English" error
messages and let a user level daemon obsfuscate them.
Maybe something like: <4> <650,2MB> Less than 2MB of memory.
The daemon interprets that as a priority 4 message, type 650. 2MB is the
auxillary data passed.
So you'd get in your log: <4> <650,2MB> <2MB memory.
Of course, that particular message is a boot message, so doesn't exactly
work too well for the example, but you get the idea. I think this was
mentioned while I was mail-less.
>
> Paul.
>