Getting a browser to work

[frankt]

New tc user, having a problem getting any browser to work. Installed 6.4 tc on old laptop, Compaq, Presario 1200, 60MBytes RAM, 60 GBytes hard drive, on a USB connected to sda1. Have a 128 MBytes swap partition on hda. Have wireless a pcmcia card. It does connect to the internet, as I can run app to select and add extensions.

Tried dillo, firefox, chrominum, and opera. I can't connect to any url with dillo. dillo doesn't do anything. firefox gives an error and says that it will send a bug report to mozilla. Choice to quit or restart firefox. Restart doesn't do anything. Chrominum must be too large to run, and it just sets there. Opera doesn't allow any other url to be input.

Any helpful suggestions are welcome.

I'm a retired software engineer from the vaccum tube days. Running Lubuntu 14.04 LTS on my hp desktop. So my skill level is still considered newbe.

[Rich]

Hi frankt
With only 60 Mbytes of RAM I'm not sure any browser will run. The one thing that you could try is the  nozswap
boot code to maximize available RAM.

[gerald_clark]

Also using persistent opt and home by using opt= and home= boot codes will reduce RAM consumption.
Please read the book.

[coreplayer2]

According to this spec sheet the notebook may have 128MB  Ram which may not be be sufficient for most full featured browsers
http://www.engadget.com/products/compaq/presario/1200/specs/


Also Firefox typically recommends 512MB ram and an SSE2 supporting processor  (have done for quite some time)  I've never tested Firefox on less than that.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/41.0.2/system-requirements/


However lynx.tcz  and elinks.tcz may work, both are in the repo

[nitram]

New tc user, having a problem getting any browser to work. Installed 6.4 tc on old laptop, Compaq, Presario 1200, 60MBytes RAM, 60 GBytes hard drive, on a USB connected to sda1. Have a 128 MBytes swap partition on hda. Have wireless a pcmcia card.

Run  free -m  and confirm what outputs for:
1. Mem: total
2. -/+ buffers: used

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free -m

coreplayer2's link suggests you have 128mb RAM with a 900Mhz processor, that's pretty good.
Can't remember exactly, you'll need ~40mb RAM to boot into graphics, the rest is gravy.

dillo doesn't do anything.
Any helpful suggestions are welcome.

Dillo is extremely lightweight, their site indicates it's capable of running on a 486 system.
Suspect you need to spend some time configuring and optimizing your setup.

As mentioned, run  free -m  and see how much ram you're utilizing at boot. Check onboot.lst and ensure you don't have any extras beyond base. As a new user it's easy to start downloading and adding software to onboot.lst, not realizing that this is severely impacting your system's optimization. So if you've now tested and added the browsers you mentioned to onboot.lst, lucky if your low spec system will even boot without thrashing and swapping.

Recommend keeping most extensions in OnDemand as your RAM is limited. Keep your home folder as compact as possible as it eats RAM at boot. Since you have a large hard drive, create an extra partition for data to keep /home small. Have fun

[curaga]

Yeah, on 64mb you can expect at most Dillo or Lynx. I recommend maxing out the RAM it will take, which would make it at least 192mb, according to wikipedia. Used RAM sticks are cheap on ebay.

Here are some RAM numbers with a few tabs open:
http://fifth-browser.sourceforge.net/propaganda.html

edit: I tested TC on a 64mb RAM VM. The boot succeeded, but the wallpaper setter didn't run, not enough free RAM at the time. Downloaded dillo, it worked fine, but things were tight. I guess you have too many things in onboot.lst for dillo to work, getting the RAM disk filled.

[frankt]

To all those who took the time to reply: Thank you very much for the suggestions and thoughts!!!     I'll give your ideas a workout just as soon as I can.


Thanks again!!!

[frankt]

To Rich: I added nozswap to the boot options.

To gerald_clark: opt= and home= boot options are set to sda1. I have read the book only one time. There is much information there. Some I do not fully understand. It may take several more readings and more knowledge to make sense of it.

To coreplayer2:  My machine has only 60Mbytes of RAM. After making the suggested changes, and rebooting, free -m shows the following:
                   total         used        free      shared  buffers
Mem:             52            48           4            0          2
-/+buffers:        -             45           6            -           -
Swap:              0               0           0            -           -

I looked at the lynx website, http://lynx.isc.org. There is a lot there to absorb. If I can't get dillo to work, I'll give lynx a try.

To nitram:  You are correct, I need to spend more time configuring and optimizing my setup.  The only additions I have in my onboot.lst have to due with my wireless card. I deleted the bash shell and, for now, ezremaster. The only unhidden item in home is my wifi.db. I have small .bashrc, .dillo, .opera, .mozilla, .viminfo files/directories. Everything else is standard: .Xauthority, .Xdefaults, .ash_history, .ashrc, .cache, etc.

Thanks to all. I'll try dillo again and see what I get after making the changes you have suggested.

[nitram]

Definitely would benefit from more physical RAM.

You have a large drive and could set up a larger swap partition (only 128mb when drive is 60gb).

Your  free -m  results indicate the swap partition isn't recognized.
You'll need to remedy as without swap your low RAM system won't be very useful.

On my system, for example,  free -m  properly shows:
  - swap: total 729mb  - yours shows 0   
  - swap: used 0
  - swap: free 729

Run blkid in terminal to see if your swap is recognized:

Code: [Select]

blkid | grep sd

Also check /etc/fstab to ensure swap is listed:

Code: [Select]

cat /etc/fstab

Gut /home/tc directory of software you're not using as it limits available RAM after boot:
  - Delete entire tc/.mozilla (large) and .opera directories, your system won't run this software
  - Look in .config and .local for remnants of software previously installed that you'll never run
  - TC includes vi out-of-the-box, vim seems like unnecessary duplication

As previously recommended by gerald_clark, persistent /home and /opt would defnitely be helpful.

You have a large drive and don't need to delete extensions, use Apps to move items from OnBoot to OnDemand.
The limitation isn't how much software you download onto drive, just how much you can load into RAM during a session.

Apps > Maintenance > OnBoot Maintenance --> remove ezremaster
Apps > Mantenance > OnDemand Maintenance  --> add ezremaster

Provided you have a working swap partition, should be able to run Dillo. Install size with FLTK is 4mb compressed and it does not bloat like Firefox during use.

[gerald_clark]

If you have no swap partition, you can use a swap file instead.
When using home= and opt= boot options, be sure to remove opt and home from .filetool.lst.
You will, however need at least one entry.  EX:
etc/passwd
etc/shadow

[frankt]

Dillo is now working without me doing more that was stated in my last post.

From the blkid | grep sd command:
/dev/sda1: UUID="feb86ee2-bc75-42eb-8eb5-a83228a1c06f5" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="DB53-9562" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="c3072e18-01"

cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab
proc              /proc               proc        defaults                         0               0
sysfs             /sys                 sysfs      defaults                         0               0
devpts          /dev/pts           devpts    defaults                         0               0
tmpfs            /dev/shm         tmpfs      defaults                         0               0
/dev/fd0        /mnt/fd0               auto           noauto,users,exec     0  0  # Added by TC
/dev/sda1     /mnt/sda1            ext2           noauto,users,exec,relatiime    0  0   # Added by TC
/dev/sdb1     /mnt/sdb1            vfat            noauto,users,exec,umask=000   0  0 # Added by TC
/dev/sr0        /ment/sr0             auto           noauto,users,exec     0  0  # Added by TC

Just for information, showbootcodes displays the following:
initrd=/tce/boot/core.gz quiet tce=sda1 restore=sda1 waitusb=10 nozswap swapfile=hda2 home=sda1 opt=sda1 vga=791 lang=en kmaps=us nodhcp noutc waitusb=5:UUID="feb86ee2-bc75-42eb-8eb5-a8328a1c06f5" tce=UUID="feb86ee2-bc75-42eb-8eb5-a8328a1c06f5" BOOT_IMAGE=/tce/boot/vmlinuz

I don't understand why /mnt doesn't show the swapfile=hda2. Since nozswap is set, I understand why free -m shows Swap: total=0 used=0 free=0, nothing shared, and no buffers.

I'm just glad to have dillo working.

[Rich]

Hi frankt

I don't understand why /mnt doesn't show the swapfile=hda2

You probably don't have a  hda2  in your machine. Did you create a swap file? If you open the control panel, there should
be a swap file utility in there.
On a side note, you list  tce=  twice in your boot codes.

[Misalf]

Also  waitusb=  is there twice.

[nitram]

Glad Dillo runs

Not familiar with  quiet  bootcode, query opposite of  showapps.
When setting up system,  showapps  very useful.

Could be mistaken,  lang=en  and  kmaps=us  bootcodes not likely required, default.

To elaborate, p.49 of Core book, setting up swap file:

10.4. swapfile - swap in a file
In normal use, you would use a regular Linux swap partition.
However, if the system is installed to a fat32 partition, and you
cannot create a swap partition, you may use a swap file. It is created
with the GUI tool, and the bootcode is used to tell the system to use
it.
Examples:
• swapfile
• swapfile=sda1
The first form will scan for a swap file, the second will scan for it
only in the specified drive.

Control Panel > Swapfile Tool > specify partition and size > add bootcode to bootloader > reboot

[Rich]

Hi nitram

Not familiar with  quiet  bootcode, ...

From:
http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt#2992

quiet      [KNL] Disable most log messages

It keeps the log messages from being echoed to the screen.