[CentOS] CentOS 2.1 on i586

Mon Oct 16 11:20:46 UTC 2006
Dag Wieers <dag at wieers.com>

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 ?

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.

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]