[CentOS] CentOS 2.1 on i586

[Lance Davis]

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, Dag Wieers wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, John Newbigin wrote:
>
>> Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
>>> I've just attempted to reinstall my ancient laptop that has Pentium MMX
>>> processor.  Since it is ancient, I've decided to go with CentOS 2.1. Got
>>> stuck, installer claims I need at least i686.  Hmmm...  I know that 3.8 and
>>> 4.4 work without a glitch on i586, so this came as surprise.  I even thing
>>> original RHEL2.1 might had support for i586 too (but I might be wrong).
>>>
>>> Anyhow, what happened with i586 in CentOS 2.1?
>>
>> Although i386 kernel & glibc are provided, you can not install onto anything
>> less than i686.  You will have to attach the disk to something newer to do the
>> install, downgrade the kernel, libc & openssl and then you should be able to
>> stick the disk back into the 586.
>>
>> Be aware that there may be some i686 instructions in the i386 packages.  This
>> is due to packaging and compiler bugs but they are treated as WONTFIX by RH
>> because their minimum supported arch is i686.  You should be OK, just don't
>> bet the house on it.
>
> What exactly is causing anything lower than i686 to fail ? If it is
> anaconda, CentOS could patch it slightly. If it is the kernel, we could
> build a i386 one ?

Both CentOS3 and CentOS4 provide additional i586 kernel and glibc, mainly 
for via c3 processors, but should work with any i586 machine.

C4 also has additional required changes to Anaconda to allow for i586 
installation (not required in C3 because iirc the boot kernel is i386 
rather than i686 based.)


  I suspect the same hasnt been done for Centos 2.1

> Not sure if we want to do this. What are the arguments for and against
> this ? I do see some benefit to have RHEL2.1 and even RHEL3 to work on < i686.

Well as I said c3 & c4 already do - its really up to John if he wants to 
build those for the 2.1 series, but as it is the first time anyone has 
asked and it is really eol I would be tempted to say to use CentOS3 or 4 
instead.

Regards
Lance

  >


> Kind regards,
> --   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
> [all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]
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