Title: Old Computer Challenge v3: day 1 | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 10 July 2023 | |
Tags: occ oldcomputerchallenge | |
Description: | |
# Day 1 | |
Hi! Today, I started the 3rd edition of the Old Computer Challenge. | |
And it's not going well, I didn't prepare a computer before, because I | |
wanted to see how easy it would be. | |
Old Computer Challenge v3 | |
* main computer (Ryzen 5 5600X with 32 GB of memory) running Qubes OS: | |
well, Qubes OS may be the worse OS for that challenge because it needs | |
so much memory as everything is done in virtual machines, just handling | |
USB devices requires 400 MB of memory | |
* main laptop (a t470) running OpenBSD 7.3: for some reasons, the | |
memory limitation isn't working, maybe it's due to the hardware or the | |
7.3 kernel | |
* main laptop running OpenSUSE MicroOS (in dual boot): reducing the | |
memory to 512MB prevent the system to unlock the LUKS drive! | |
The thing is that I have some other laptops around, but I'd have to | |
prepare them with full disk encryption and file synchronization to have | |
my passwords, GPG and SSH keys around. | |
With this challenge, in its first hour, I realized my current workflows | |
don't allow me to use computers with 512 MB of memory, this is quite | |
sad. A solution would be to use the iBook G4 laptop that I've been | |
using since the beginning of the challenges, or my T400 running OpenBSD | |
-current, but they have really old hardware, and the challenge is | |
allowing some more fancy systems. | |
I'd really like to try Alpine Linux for this challenge, let's wrap | |
something around this idea. | |
# Extra / Tips | |
If you joined the challenge, here is a previous guide to limit the | |
memory of your system: | |
occ.deadnet.se: Tips & Tricks | |
For this challenge, you also need to use a single core at lowest | |
frequency. | |
On OpenBSD, limiting the CPU frequency is easy: | |
* stop obsdfreqd if you use it: rcctl stop obsdfreqd && rcctl disable | |
obsdfreqd | |
* rcctl enable apmd | |
* rcctl set apmd flags -L | |
* rcctl restart apmd | |
Still on OpenBSD, limiting your system to a single core can be done by | |
booting on the bsd.sp kernel, which doesn't support multithreading. |