What can I remove easily to save space?

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: What can I remove easily to save space?
started by: Fred Bloggs

Posted by Fred Bloggs on Jan. 22 2005,16:02

Hi,

I'm doing my own remaster, which will be a keyboard/monitor-less media server. What i'd like to do is a frugal install onto a compact flash card on IDE adapter (easy, i've done it before), so I can have the OS on that, with a hard drive purely dedicated to mp3's and videos. That way, if I need to change OS or anything I can simply change the primary master drive, without disturbing my media library drive, and without the noise of 2 hard drives. I will be running monkey with php to do a remote shut down or reboot via browser (i've tested and can do this from php). I'll also keep betaftp for uploading files and accessing video files.

MP3s will be streamed via Edna - which requires python.... and herein the problem. I need PHP (2 meg), edna (2 meg), python (12 meg) -but I need the total ISO size to fit on a 64 meg compact flash card, ideally with 10 meg spare for use as a backup if I need to have and files saved/restored via the normal backup/restore.

So what can I remove to save space? standard ISO is 50 meg+2+2+12=68 meg; I can loose firefox which brings things back down to 60.... I'd like to keep X, having a GUI may be useful from time to time, so I can VNC to this machine and open dillo and actually play mp3s locally as well. Any idea's what I can drop easily?

ta
FredB

Posted by tronik on Jan. 22 2005,21:37

A whole plethora of kernel modules that you wont be needing (probably)

Just see how big they are =)

'cd /lib/modules ; du -h .'

You can selectively remove the ones you know you wont be needing..you should be able to save a good deal of space there.

If you dont need xmms you might remove that too...theres lots of stuff you can remove. its up to you =) but hopefully knocking some of the unused kernel modules out will do you enough good to get you back down to where you need to be.

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 23 2005,05:02

If you are wondering how to know about the modules that you DO USE, you can type:

lsmod | more

inside an xterminal windows.

Posted by clacker on Jan. 23 2005,13:15

Fred Bloggs, so it's a headless server and you want the bare minimum, but you still want X and XMMS. I would say look at the /home/dsl/.fluxbox.menu file. Look and see what programs you know you won't use and cut them out. Things like xpdf, siag, pathetic writer, emelfm, xcalc. I'd get rid of /usr/games, too.

Is there anything you can cut out of python? Do you really use all of the libraries included to run edna? I'd bet that very few of the actually get used. Look at the edna python code and see what gets used. Then untar the python into your remaster and take away what you dont need from that.

Another thought would be to use 15Megs of you harddrive as storage for the 2 dsl files. A startup script could load the dsls from there.