Need advice on installation (low memory and nVidia driver)

[zugunder]

Hi,

I need some advice on installation method for Mageia 2. I need to run a scientific program (Gromacs, it does not have GUI) on a dedicated machine. Since this application would require as much RAM and CPU power as I can get, I'll need a clean install including only IceWM (or something similar, I just do not like bare terminal) and I think of trying a server kernel as it seems to be more suitable for this kind of tasks.
How would you recommend to perform installation so that I would not need to get rid of unnecessary applications? If I need something else, I could install it separately later.

Thank you.

[doktor5000]

Probably a netinstall, and choosing to no install suggested packages, and only some DM would get you a pretty small base install.
But the DualArch CD also gives a really small footprint IMHO. You might want to look at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation ... k_Installs

[zugunder]

Hi,
I've never thought the network minimalistic install could be such a pain...
Overall, I managed to install IceWM Lite and it seemed to work for a while. Strangely, only the Nouveau driver was silently installed, though I used the non-free boot.iso.
Added non-free and tainted repositories via MCC (with a couple of minor issues - for some reason it allowed to do so only for one repo at a time...). When I tried to install the latest proprietary nVidia driver, I got a message saying I should configure it manually via XFdrake from terminal. OK, I removed the Nouveau, rebooted to a safe mode, ran XFdrake, chose the option "GeForce 6100...400" (I have a 6200 AGP) and was told that "a proprietary driver is available". OK, agree, but then... black screen with a message saying that my "screen resolution is too low, resize the screen and try again, Ctrl+C to exit". Ctrl+C to exit and I see that the system tried to download smth from the http mirror I used for network install, which is quite strange, because a) I have already installed the driver via MCC and b) I enabled a bunch of repos in MCC as well...
So as of now I can't load to desktop and I can't make a system use the nVidia driver... And everything I am trying to install via terminal fails (aria exit 19) while trying to download packages from the same http mirror I used for installation.
What should I do now?
Thank you.

[zugunder]

OK, if there are no suggestions, I'll re-formulate the question - what may have I done wrong here?

Thank you.

[digigold]

Added non-free and tainted repositories via MCC (with a couple of minor issues - for some reason it allowed to do so only for one repo at a time...).

What exactly do you mean here? It's best to just remove all existing media then click add and choose the "Full set" option.

You could also try setting Mageia to use the basic VESA driver before trying to use nvidia

everything I am trying to install via terminal fails

Could you provide some more detail here?

[zugunder]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply,

What exactly do you mean here? It's best to just remove all existing media then click add and choose the "Full set" option.

By default I had only Core and Core updates checked in the list in MCC. When I click, say, a Non-free checkbox, I can make it selected, but if I try to check one more box right after that - nothing happens, the checkboxes stay clear. So I needed to do OK, exit the list and load it once again in order to select one more repo.

You could also try setting Mageia to use the basic VESA driver before trying to use nvidia

But it means I did everything correctly so far? The problem is that I can't install even the Nouveau driver which worked right after installation.

Could you provide some more detail here?

I'll make a screenshot when I am back to work. But basically after I load Mageia 2 in a safe mode (it is root already) and try to do urpmi <any_package> I get an error: aria2 error exit 19. However, if I try to search for a package using only a part of its name, I am given a list of available packages, so I guess the repository is actually available.

Thank you.

[zugunder]

Hi,
So that's what I have figured out:
nVidia driver is installed correctly only via MCC (with downloading a kernel source, etc). If I try to run XFdrake after reboot as a root - it fails to download anything. I guess it is due to the network install settings. One more thing about network install is that in half of the cases it gets stuck at sending DHCP request in the very beginning, so I had to reboot.
Now everything works fine under IceWM Light (wich is really light - i.e. it lacks many things I have in IceWM in Mageia 1, which is not good imho).
I also istalled LXDE to take a look at it and compare to IceWM. However, LXDM was not initiated and I was not able to start it at boot.

So, with IceWM:

Code: Select all

free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2054164     302952    1751212          0      13328     135556
-/+ buffers/cache:     154068    1900096

So I installed LXDE afresh and with a server kernel and nVidia drivers it is:

Code: Select all

free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2058208     374292    1683916          0      12948     148988
-/+ buffers/cache:     212356    1845852

Which is not too impressive, as Gnome 2 takes up about 300M and the latest XFCE about 250M...
Anyway, we'll see how it works, in the worst case I always can switch to openbox or IceWM...
And yes, all systems are 64-bit.

[doktor5000]

Depending on the amount of RAM you may want to use a 32bit system, as the memory usage there is always a bit less.
You could also just use some window manager instead of some DM. But the common footprint of a general-purpose distro
of Mageia will always be bigger than that of say something like Slitaz, Tiny Core, DSL or Puppy Linux and similar.
But you can still optimize it, by not starting services you don't need and things like that.

For comparisons take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweigh ... stribution

[zugunder]

Hi,

I need a 64bit system as the program I want to use runs about 10% faster on a 64bit. So here is a trade-off, as usual...
Memory is not such a big problem, as it turned out - nVidia driver is. The system crashed after reboot, displaying this:
No changes after I run drakx11, set the parameters (either exactly the same as before or with turned off compositing) - then either reboot or systemctl default - it always brings me to this screen.
I also tried to initiate an nv or a Nouveau drivers via drakx11 at boot (as Nouveau is already installed), but the result is exactly the same.
Could anything be done about it or should I better switch to some server-oriented distro instead?
Thank you.

[zugunder]

Hi,

Here is a brief report on my attempts to run Mageia 2 with nVidia drivers on GeForce6200 AGP card.
I tried IceWM and LXDE (from a dual-arch CD) on a 64-bit system.
In both cases the Nouveau driver was installed by default and worked well. However, I needed certain rendering features of nVidia card, so I tried to install Nvidia proprietary drivers from the official Mageia repository. I immediately faced several unexpected features/problems/bugs (it's up to you how to classify them):
1. If I try to select and install a driver and corresponding kernel module from the MCC's package list, I receive a message saying I should login as root and configure my new driver via drakx11. Do not do that, because if you follow it literally, i.e. shut down the system expecting to be brought to text login window - it will not happen. I got the error message from the picture above and running drakx11 did not help, though it tried to configure smth. Instead of shutting down the system one has to go MCC's "Configure X server" and choose the card and driver from there.
2. What I described above is not necessary to do as it turned out (I made it just because of a habit to select packages manually). One should go straight to MCC's "Configure X server" and select your nVidia card. Then the message about proprietary drivers availability will be displayed, one has to agree and all the installation (including downloading of kernel source and complilation) will be carried out automatically. Then reboot - the driver will be loaded and working.
3. However, I discovered that automatic installation from (2) works in a rather funny way - in my case it downloaded not only a source for a kernel-server (which I had installed instead of desktop) but also a kernel-netbook source. Of course, I did not have this kernel installed. As a result, autoinstall recompiled 2 kernels. It took some time of course...
4. After everything was over and I rebooted the system, nVidia driver was loaded and functional. However, for not too long. Without changing anything in video settings, just browsing internet (Midori and Firefox) I noticed that the system became quite inresponsive, page scrolling was slow and X process was constantly eating 10-20% of CPU (via top). I rebooted and again saw the same black screen with a problem report. No way to fix it.
5. The same thing happened with absolutely minimal changes of the freshly installed system with a desktop kernel.
6. There were several more minor problems/glitches I described in the thread above (but nothing serious though).

So I finally gave up, installed Scientific Linux, added ELREPO and installed 30x.xx nVidia driver from there without any problems. I am writing this message under SL6 with all the soft I needed been installed and running.
Sorry, Mageia as it is now is just unable to compete with RHEL clones as far as stability is concerned, even for such a low-demanding amateur like me (I am running a system on a simple dual-core box of ~5-7 years of age).

Thank you for your attention and good luck.