Installing with Hints for Low RAM Memory Machines!
Installing Source Mage from an ISO is a very easy process. This document will guide you through the installation process step by step, with hints for low memory machines. I have created this doc based on the existing Install from an ISO.
***Begin Notes***
I will supply extra hints via the same header I have here "***Notes***" at various stages below to signal points of interest and how to get around low memory problems.
This document was created while investigating the possibilities for Source Mage to be used in Africa for cheap and old hardware. I installed Source Mage on an older AMD-K6 200Mhz with 32MB memory. I had to be VERY patient and often saw different forms of buffer overflows in the beginning due to my CDROM being too fast for the filled up RAM memory... again, be patient...
Also I lost the ncurses menu several times on the way to creating my system, you can always restart it by executing the script "sgl.install", good to know! From this menu you can get back to the guided install process if it breaks off at any time.
***End Notes***
Ok, let's Boot-up!
Reconfigure your bios so that it tries to boot off of a cd before the hard drive. Make sure there are no floppies in the drive and reboot. After it looks at the cd it should start a welcome screen up. It should say something like this:
SMGL-ISO-<version>.iso Linux kernel x.x.xx Then at the bottom it should say boot:
At this screen just press enter and it spout out your hardware and other information. Soon it should come to the initrd menu.
Initrd Menu
This menu is if you need to do anything special in order to install Source Mage. You can load modules (modules for various file systems, raid drivers, and various other drivers). At this menu you can also choose what root device you would like to use. Since you are installing from the ISO you can just leave it be and press Continue booting to continue with the installation.
= Install Menu = In this menu you have quite a few options, First you can view an introduction, which gives some basic information about Source Mage. After that you have Native Language support, which you can use to change the language the installer is using. Now onto the actual installing!
note: The menus are guided (not all of them show up untill a certain point) but you can have all of the items shown by selecting Disable Guided Menu.
To partition, select Partitioning and select which disc you would like to edit the partitioning of. Now you have to pick which program you would like to use to partition. Your options are cfdisk, fdisk, and parted. Personally I prefer cfdisk as it is much easier to use then the other two for me, but you can use whichever one you are comfortable with. After partitioning is done you will arrive back to the Install menu.
***Begin Notes***
At this point it might break out of the ncurses "Guided Menu", to take care of the partitioning by hand you need to realize which disks you are dealing with. I wanted to have ext3 filesystems on two disks with one partition each that were idenitfied as /devices/discs/disc0/part1 and /devices/discs/disc1/part1 so I just exited to a shell and executed "mke2fs -j /devices/discs/disc0/part1" and "mke2fs -j /devices/discs/disc1/part1". Then restart the guided menu with "sgl.install" and select "Disable Guided Menu".
***End Notes***
Now it is time to mount your filesystems. select Mount Partitions then select the disc which contains the partition to mount as root and then select the partition number. If you forgot the exact number you can go back to partitioning and use cfdisk to get an easy view of what partition number it is. It will then ask you if you wish to check for errors. The default is no and it is usually fine to leave it as this as checking for errors (especially on large drives) can take a LONG time. It will then show you the mkfs command it will use and it will say Yes or No. Yes means you want to run this command (and format that partition that way). No means you don't. For a root drive you probably should do yes but if your mounting a backup drive (any drive you put in will be put into /etc/fstab automatically) then make sure you are carefull or you'll wipe all your data. AFter you mount the root partition it will bring you back to the Install Menu, but the options have changed. If you wish to mount more partitions now you can do it by just pressing enter (selecting Mount Filesystems again).
The next option below it is to Make Swapfile. Swapfiles serve the same purpose as the swap partition. You can use them instead of swap partitions (if you don't want to repartition again) or you can use it to expand your current swap partition. Most Source Mage users just use swap partitions. If you wish to create a swapfile you will be asked how big (in megabytes) you would like your swapfile. As was stated before, the prefered method for swap is just having a swap partition as swapfiles can add a layer of overhead to your system. You only need a swap file OR swap partition, but you don't need both.
***Begin Notes***
Something that I had alot of problems with was that the swapfile is made ok, but not turned on until later in the process... this caused my ncurses menu's to fail due to not enough memory. After you make the swapfile you can activate it by moving to the shell and "swapon /mnt/root/swapfile". You can check the effect with the command "free", you should see your swapfile listed there. After you have done this you will have a WHOLE lot less problems! 
***End Notes***
Now it's time to set your root partition up. Select Transfer Source Mage and it will start copying files to your root partition. Depending how how fast your drive and cd-rom are this can take a small amount of time.
***Begin Notes***
Should you be unable to do this from the guided menu feature, then you can always do it by hand by first changing into the root dir of your soon to be Source Mage; "cd /mnt/root" and executing "tar xjvf /image.tar.bz2". You should then seen the system being copied over to your disks.
***End Notes***
Now for the finishing touches :). Select Select Timezone and pick which timezone you are in. After you pick a timezone you will be able to select either GMT or Local. Local time means that your clock is at your current time already and is reccomended for dual boot systems. GMT means in it assumes your system clock is at Greeenwich Mean Time and will have linux subtract how many hours to your current time zone. This is reccomended if it's a linux only system.
Now for the optimizations! Select Architecture Optimize and select what cpu you are using on that machine. Next you have to choose what other optimizations you would like to use. Speedy means it will optimize for speed, risky means it will go faster but it is a lot more risky an option to use. Tiny means it will make the final application small, and strip means it will strip out all the debugging symbols in the app (making the binary smaller). It is reccomended not to use speedy and tiny together as these can cause problems in compiling
Next select Configure Linux Kernel. It will ask you if you wish to change the kernel, and you should press y unless you want the vanilla 2.4.19 kernel. By pressing y you can select some kernel patches you wish to install. Do not change the kernel version to LATEST_2_4!!. This will try to download it and since no network has been setup or anything it will fail. This is a bug on the latest ISO and should be fixed by the next version! Note: you can go to the latest 2.4 kernel after you set up networking and reboot. When you get into the newly installed system if you reconfigure by typing "cast -r -c linux" then you will be able to select LATEST_2_4.
When done select Save and Exit and it will load up menuconfig. Set up the kernel as you normally would and exit as you normally would. It will ask you if you wish to run menuconfig again. If you do, press y, otherwise press enter (or n). After that it will run oldconfig and start compiling. It will automatically run lilo after the kernel is compiled. If your dual booting your system and don't want lilo installed on the master boot record you can skip the reconfiguring lilo step (unless you want to change something of course). If you want lilo to run on the master boot record (and have lilo be the main boot loader for the system) then what you need to do is select Reconfigure Lilo and in your editor go down to the line that says boot=. Change that to say boot=/devices/discs/disc0/disc. That will put lilo on your master boot record.
Make any additional changes to lilo as you wish then exit out of the editor. lilo will rerun itself. Next select Configure Networking. The first box will ask for the name of your machine. Just type in what you want the machine to be named. Next select what protocol you would like to use to connect to the internet. Ethernet is just with a standard NIC card, PPP is dial-up, and PPPOE is using DSL. Then just follow the dialogs for your specific connection protocol.
And you are now done! If you need to you can go back to any menu to change items and then select Done and select yes to reboot. Your computer should reboot into sourcemage and you should be able to login. When you see the see the login prompt type the username root and press enter for the password. Once your in change the root password with passwd command. And that's it. Your done!
Note: Now is the PERFECT time to do a rebuild of your system. Doing this will recompile all of your installed spells and optimize them for your processor. I HIGHLY recommend that you do this now, as it can speed up your system, but the longer you hold off, the more spells will be recompiled. To rebuild your system type "sorcery rebuild" without the quotes.
***Begin Notes***
Before doing this you might want to ensure that the sorcery options menu has TEMPFS turned off (compiling in memory), that you edit your /etc/fstab to NOT use the tempfs for /tmp. Now it is time to rebuild but remember you will have alot of time on your hands waiting for the system to rebuild. That is about if for now... feel free to add more tricks and tips if you have them here!
***End Notes***
Welcome to Source Mage 