[oi-dev] OpenIndiana Docs - updated

[Michael Kruger]

On 05/16/2016 08:41 AM, Alexander Pyhalov wrote:

> Some notes:
> http://makruger.github.io/website/pages/docs/faq.html:
> 1) Sun/Oracle’s proprietary OS/NET consolidation has been replaced with
> illumos-gate. => Sun OS/NET consolidation, closed by Oracle, has been
> replaced...  I mean, OS/NET was open.... until Oracle came;

OK, thanks for pointing this out. I'll fix it.


> 2) What are the recommended hardware specifications... I'm not sure
> about 4GB... It can be true for desktop/decent server, but you shurely
> can run OI with 2GB RAM or even less. I've just checked, my OI VM with
> GUI has 2 GB RAM... Perhaps, we can distinguish minimal and recommended
> requirements?

Yes, I too have run the Gnome desktop as a virtual machine with 2GB and 
never experienced any problems.

Then one day I tried to run the Gnome desktop on a physical machine with 
an Nvidia adapter and this did not run well on 2GB. In fact when I 
performed a pkg update, the system used up all 3GB of available memory 
(2GB of RAM and the 1GB paging file) resulting in pkg crashing. Nothing 
else was running....just Gnome and a command shell window. So I 
attributed the crash to insufficient memory.

This prompted me to suggest a 2GB minimum with an additional note to be 
sure to enlarge the paging file above it's default of 50% of physical 
memory.

Later we modified this with even more specific information regarding the 
true minimums and maximums, etc. based on what the source code was 
actually doing.

Around the same time, others in the forums were suggesting a 4GB 
minimum, so I decided to simply do away with the minimum spec and all 
the confusing language and caveats that went with it....and simply 
say....4GB recommended.

To solve this issue, I can look through my git logs and examine the 
language used in previous versioins of this document to find some 
compromise everyone is happy with.

But as someone said in the forum...."If you can't dedicate more memory 
to the system than what is common to a cell phone, then perhaps you 
should not be running OI as your desktop".

Sorry for the long story...but that's how we arrived at a 4GB recommended.


>
> http://makruger.github.io/website/pages/docs/handbook.html
> Besides synchronizing to Handbook on the wiki, other notes:
> 1) Booting physical hardware - seems irrelevant, better to provide links
> to illumos HCL and OI community HCL.
> 2) 2.1.2. Booting Virtual Hardware
> No special tricks are required for Virtualbox, just mention to select os
> type Solaris 11 64-bit.
> 3) 2.2. The OpenIndiana Boot Menu
>   You should eventually be presented with a desktop. - irrelevant to
> Text Install images.
> 4) Perhaps, need to mention that UEFI boot is still not supported.
> 5) 4.2  When you boot from the text installer, it immediately begins the
> installation process using the previously described Text based Guided
> Install.
> Not entirely true, it also can spawn shell and be used as recovery image.


Admittedly, my skeleton of a handbook has not received very much 
attention as there are lots of problems with it. I've mostly just been 
tossing notes into it for future reference. I'll add your suggestions 
and, as I have time, begin to mold this document into something more 
useful. Just so you know, it's been my intention all along to start 
pulling in reusable content from the Wiki, etc.


> Other general note. If we have to use some documentation tools to write
> OI documentation, they should be available in OI repository. Perhaps
> it's not true for IDEs, but basic tools should be there.


In the case of this website, there really aren't any tools. That's the 
beauty of it all. The site is completely self contained and inclusive of 
all it's documents. Creating or editing documents only requires a plain 
text editor (VIM, Gedit, etc.).

A Ruby development environment is only required when running the site 
locally in development mode, or when deploying it to github pages. Most 
contributors would never need to do any of that.

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback,

Michael