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  • Re: debian for limited ram

    From Tom Furie@21:1/5 to Bitfox on Fri Nov 22 10:50:01 2024
    On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 05:30:08PM +0800, Bitfox wrote:
    I got a vps from BF flash sale (vps dot blackfriday) which has only 512mb ram.
    for this limited ram what debian release should be better to install?
    The current one, bookworm, unless you mean something else by
    "release"...

    Cheers,
    Tom

    --
    During the voyage of life, remember to keep an eye out for a fair wind; batten down during a storm; hail all passing ships; and fly your colors proudly.

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  • From Bitfox@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 22 10:40:01 2024
    Hi

    I got a vps from BF flash sale (vps dot blackfriday) which has only
    512mb ram.
    for this limited ram what debian release should be better to install?

    Thanks.

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  • From Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 22 10:50:01 2024
    On 22 Nov 2024 17:30 +0800, from hi@bitfox.ddns.net (Bitfox):
    I got a vps from BF flash sale (vps dot blackfriday) which has only 512mb ram.
    for this limited ram what debian release should be better to install?

    Bookworm (in other words, Stable).

    https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch03s04.en.html

    I expect that you would not be running the installer, but rather using
    the provider's OS installation management features; so what matters is
    the system requirements after installation. I have successfully booted
    Debian Bookworm (without a GUI) on VMs with slightly less than 256 MB
    RAM, so 512 MB should be plenty.

    --
    Michael Kjörling
    🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se

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  • From Andrew M.A. Cater@21:1/5 to Bitfox on Fri Nov 22 10:50:01 2024
    On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 05:30:08PM +0800, Bitfox wrote:
    Hi

    I got a vps from BF flash sale (vps dot blackfriday) which has only 512mb ram.
    for this limited ram what debian release should be better to install?

    Thanks.


    Whatever your VPS vendor will support on their hardware. Debian 12 would make sense - command line only, no GUI. If you get to reinstall, you'd need to specifically uncheck any graphical environment.

    This will also include RAM needed for any remote access via web terminal.

    I'm not currently sure what the minimum RAM required to boot and run a
    modern kernel is, but 512M should do it straightforwardly.

    Be prepared for a lot of command line learning. Good luck!

    All the very best, as ever,

    Andy Cater
    (amacater@debian.org)

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  • From Greg Wooledge@21:1/5 to Bitfox on Fri Nov 22 13:30:01 2024
    On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 17:30:08 +0800, Bitfox wrote:
    I got a vps from BF flash sale (vps dot blackfriday) which has only 512mb ram.
    for this limited ram what debian release should be better to install?

    They probably install Debian on it for you; you usually don't get to
    run the installer yourself. So you'd be starting with whatever version
    of Debian they provide, and whatever packages they include in their
    default installation.

    From there, you can try to upgrade to a newer release, if you feel it's
    a good idea, *and* if the new release is supported on their virtualization platform.

    You'll need to learn which virtualization platform they're using, and
    take note of the limitations of that platform. For example, some
    platforms allow you to augment that 512 MB of RAM with swap, and
    others do not.

    Also, on some platforms, you will be booting a full virtual machine
    with its own kernel. On other platforms, you will be running in a
    container using the host's kernel. That host kernel may be quite a
    bit older than what a Debian release would typically use. In some
    cases, the kernel version may be so old that the Debian stable userland
    can't run on it. In those cases, you would need to know which is the
    newest version of Debian that you *can* run.

    In addition to platform concerns, you'll have to figure out what you're
    running on this VPS, how to make it all fit within the available RAM
    (with or without swap), and which Debian version(s) support your
    applications. For example, if you're running an application that
    only works in Python 2.x (such as, purely hypothetically, a MoinMoin
    wiki), you shouldn't upgrade to a version of Debian that has removed
    Python 2.x.

    Good luck!

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  • From Bitfox@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 22 15:50:01 2024

    In addition to platform concerns, you'll have to figure out what you're running on this VPS, how to make it all fit within the available RAM
    (with or without swap), and which Debian version(s) support your applications.

    Do you think if it's suitable to run a apache2 + php7 server for my
    personal project (not wordpress)?

    Thank you in advance.

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  • From Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 22 16:20:01 2024
    On 22 Nov 2024 22:49 +0800, from hi@bitfox.ddns.net (Bitfox):
    Do you think if it's suitable to run a apache2 + php7 server for my personal project (not wordpress)?

    I would say no; for the simple reason that it appears that no PHP 7
    release is currently supported upstream.

    --
    Michael Kjörling
    🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se

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  • From Andy Smith@21:1/5 to Bitfox on Fri Nov 22 17:30:02 2024
    Hi,

    On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 05:30:08PM +0800, Bitfox wrote:
    I got a vps from BF flash sale (vps dot blackfriday) which has only 512mb ram.
    for this limited ram what debian release should be better to install?

    Although the smallest VM we sell to customers is 1.5GiB RAM, I have some
    of our own infrastructure VMs running 512M RAM on Debian 12 (bookworm).

    They don't do much though.

    To squeeze more things in to such a VM you might need to cut down on
    some of the things that run by default. I might be tempted to go with
    Alpine or something else that is considered good for stripped down
    containers.

    Thanks,
    Andy

    --
    https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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  • From Stefan Monnier@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 22 19:10:01 2024
    I got a vps from BF flash sale (vps dot blackfriday) which has only
    512mb ram. for this limited ram what debian release should be better
    to install?

    All Debian releases are generally quite good for limited
    RAM circumstances.

    IME the main limit is the RAM used by `apt`, so for machines with less
    memory you may need to be patient during package upgrades, but unless
    you have very many packages installed (unlikely on small machines),
    512MB should be plenty nowadays.
    [Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements](https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/amd64/ch03s04.en.html) says 256MB should work as well.

    If the RAM requirements are too tight for Debian (e.g. 128MB might be impractical for Debian), OpenWRT may be a better option than an
    old Debian.


    Stefan

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  • From Anssi Saari@21:1/5 to c9bc136c6063@ewoof.net on Fri Nov 22 21:00:01 2024
    Michael Kjörling <c9bc136c6063@ewoof.net> writes:

    I have successfully booted Debian Bookworm (without a GUI) on VMs with slightly less than 256 MB RAM, so 512 MB should be plenty.

    I guess that depends. I remember having a cheap or free trial VPS for a
    month with just 512 MB. Git ran out of RAM trying to check out the Linux kernel. Likewise Netbeans was crashing with memory issues when I tried
    to do some little Java programming for a course.

    Didn't try to setup paging, just let it go.

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  • From Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 22 21:30:01 2024
    On 22 Nov 2024 21:54 +0200, from anssi.saari@debian-user.mail.kapsi.fi (Anssi Saari):
    I have successfully booted Debian Bookworm (without a GUI) on VMs with
    slightly less than 256 MB RAM, so 512 MB should be plenty.

    I guess that depends. I remember having a cheap or free trial VPS for a
    month with just 512 MB. Git ran out of RAM trying to check out the Linux kernel. Likewise Netbeans was crashing with memory issues when I tried
    to do some little Java programming for a course.

    Git checking out the Linux kernel, or running Netbeans, is somewhat
    more than _booting_ a system without a GUI.

    --
    Michael Kjörling
    🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se

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  • From Stefan Monnier@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 22 22:40:01 2024
    I guess that depends. I remember having a cheap or free trial VPS for a
    month with just 512 MB. Git ran out of RAM trying to check out the Linux

    I can confirm that even 1GB of RAM is not really sufficient to use a Git repository that tracks the Linux kernel (I've so far been able to do it
    on my 1GB Banana Pi, but not without trouble).

    Not sure what this has to do with the RAM requirements of Debian, OTOH,
    since the above problem would occur just as well under any other OS.


    Stefan

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