Yes you read it right, I’m installing the latest openSuse on a PII 400mhz with 196MB of Ram and a 10GB hard drive. I’m installing a text gui only, no xserver on this biatch. I have already installed Suse on another box and made it dual boot with windows. It was really simple to install and I didn’t have to install any extra drivers with my first install and was a little bit easier since it was a newer system. This second experience has not been that easy. In short it has been the eqivilent of putting a cadillac motor into a Ford Pinto.

First let me reiterate my hardware:
Compaq Deskpro
PII 400mhz 196MB Ram 10GB Hard Drive
Linksys NC100 Network Adapter
Unknown CDRW

First off I had to create a swap partition since I did not have the required 256MB of RAM. I did this by booting up in Knoppix and creating a swap partition roughly double the amount of ram I had: 196MB X 2 = ~400MB of Swap partition.
After this I had a warning message of this nature
“Error occurred while creating the catalog.
cd://?devices=/dev/hdc,/dev/hdd
Unknown error: unable to copy media directory
to /var/tmp/TmpDir.j4jPSa/MEDIA”
There are four reasons that I have found to cause this message:
1.) The media or the original .iso download is corrupted. Check the .iso with MD5SUM (do a search).
2.) The IDE driver in SUSE doesn’t like your ide controller. Try booting with the insmod=ide-generic boot option.
3.) The DVD was burned at too high of a speed. Try 4x or slower
4.) The drive is incompatible with the DVD media. Try a firmware update or a new drive. I knew my disc was not corrupted since this is my second system to install Suse on so I tried using the generic IDE driver with the boot option insmod=ide-generic to no avail. I then tried a different cd drive and had to end up using the boot option anyway. After beginning the install I then used This Custom Server Setup for OpenSuse 10.2, since my goal is a server for at home. I am looking forward to some extra hardware from my friend Dan who has a bunch of parts for this obsolete machine. I would like to install another hard disk, and a PIII as well as some more ram. I’m not sure how Suse will handle me installing newer hardware. I hope I don’t have to do another install. I guess we will find out. Cheers