A Frugal, non-frugal alternative


Forum: HD Install
Topic: A Frugal, non-frugal alternative
started by: Fordi

Posted by Fordi on Sep. 14 2004,02:44
This is for anyone with a 256M Disk-on-chip/Compact-Flash disk, specifically.

So you want to build a thin client.

You can do the frugal install, yes.  It only takes 50M + extensions.  Problem: filesystem is read-only.  You're going to have some troubles installing that cool software you wanted.

You can do a full install - which will take up to 200M.  You've got the space, but almost no breathing room.

What to do?

Go for the full.  Set up dpkg-restore and apt. (Apps->Tools->Enable Apt)

hit a root prompt and type in:

apt-get install upx-ucl

UPX is an executable compression program.  It won't work on the libraries, but you can free up to 25M by packing your /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/X11R6/bin, /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin.  It's not much, I'll agree, but it's definately better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick - and it's about 40% more space to work with on that 256M disk-on-chip.  Additionally, anything else you install can be upx'ed, saving more precious space.  The exception here is uci's.  They're read-only, so no packing them.  Not that they occupy disk space other than their already-compressed form in the /tmp folder, anyways.

UPDATE: DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT attempt to compress the /sbin folder.  For one thing, init won't work right. (think Kernel Panic)

on the up side, if you do screw something up in your experiments (as I have):

Boot from dsl CD
get to a root console
mount your root partition (/dev/hda3 in my case)
have tar copy all the files from /KNOPPIX
Here's how:
Code Sample

mount /dev/hda3
tar -C /KNOPPIX -cf - . | tar -C /mnt/hda3 -xf -


why tar?  Well, really I don't know.  That's how it's done in the dsl-hdinstall script, and my guess is that piped tar will do things that plain old cp -a won't.

reboot and reinstall the gnu-utils.dsl package from the dillo/mydsl interface

Posted by roberts on Sep. 15 2004,20:13
I would not recommend a full hard drive install to compact flash drives. Why do a frugal install? Several reasons: First, one of the strengths of DSL is that it represents a complex unit that can be upgraded enmasse, with all local customization kept completely separate (not intermixed with the "installed" files). Second, normally-installed operating systems really like to write to their disk drives a lot. Using a frugal type install loads the kernel into RAMdisk just as it does with the liveCD. This mode of operation is again ideal, because it avoids the stress of swap files or log files that wear out CF cards. CF cards and USB pendrive have limited life for writing. There is no problem with reading data.
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