| 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. |