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]