Reducing Debian Installation Size???
 

Hi,

Currently I am using Debian 3.1 version (Kernel version 2.6) on my Development machine. I am able to have the GNOME going with the installation size of around 730MB. I have some space constraint on my Production system. Therefore is there any way I can further reduce the size by 100-150MB more so that I can have the GNOME working under 600MB or so on my Production System.

I have heard about Busy Box and EmDebain but I want some suggestions/solutions other than that as I don�t want to use those diet libraries and compromise the standard components of a Debian distribution.

Basically I just want to figure out how I can reduce the installation size further. I am already running the system with minimum utilities.

Can anyone help me?

Kushal

Gnome is not really a suitable choice if hd space is a problem. Go with Blackbox or Xfce. Gnome is huge, just as KDE can be. You can still run Gnome apps in Blackbox or another, it will install some gnome-libs along with the apps, but never in the order of hundreds of megabytes.

Moloko, Thanks for your reply and effort. I am assuming that I will have to install X-Windows before I go ahead and install Blackbox or Xfce or do they come integraded with X-Windows system(Xfree86 or Xorg)?

Also, I have heard about compressing huge directories with something called squashfs. Has anyone ever tried that?

Thank you once agian.

You can install localepurge to delete locales you dont use. That would free ~90megs on my system.

Thank you!!! Seems like a good idea. I will try that. Are there any similar kind of work around(removing locales) to reduce the size further??

Thanks

/usr/share/doc would be next on my list. Unless you really need them and can't access the docs online. You'll still have the man pages in /usr/share/man

Great!!! Excellent Kostian. I guess all this will reduce the size to around 100MB!!!.

Any more contributions from anyone. We can then list all this technique on one particular page/post as this is a very common question asked now a days specially for people who are working in the Embedded Industry.

You should be able to create compressed partitions by mounting them through the loopback device, similar to how Knoppix does, but you should be able to get write access also. There might be some documentation about that in the 'mount' man page.

Yeah something like that would be very vey helpful if I decide to stick with GNOME. Does any one have any kind experiences/ideas with this kind of stuff which 'lpd' has suggested.

Thanks.

You can try to have a look at how I install debian, I try to keep the hd use at some kind of minimum too (though I don't delete docs).
Look here: http://users.skynet.be/six/gpure/tech/linux/debian.html

U already know localepurge. You can also use deborphan to find any unused libraries and delete them.
I think the way I install X is minimal (NOT apt-get x-window-system). I use ion3 as wm, though fluxbox, icewm use very little too if u look for that. If u need something more featured (without too much work) you could try xfce. And if you need gnome I think there's the package gnome-core which only installs the minimal gnome.

have a look at my page, I'd normally not refer to it and put all info you need here but I have no time now.

grtz
guni

Wow that's an awesome page. Well the currently the way is installed Debian is as follow:

For X-Windows I did:
apt-get install xserver-xorg xserver-xcommon xfonts-base

For GNOME I did:
apt-get install gnome-core (similar to what you have suggested)

I already have used localepurge and I still have to try deborphan. With all tis I am able to have GNOME just over 700MB. But as I said the more space I can get freed the better it is.

Any more thoughts?

Just for information, the following are the sized that I was able to achieve for 3 different types of installation. if you have any questions regarding this just let me know.

Minimal Install: 300MB (No X-windows, Just terminal based login with network running(ssh,ifconfig,wireless,etc))
Mid-install: 404MB (With X-windows system (Xorg)
Full -install: 700MB (GONME,X-windows, Graphics drivers, Audio,etc)


Thanks

Kushal

With deborphan do:
#deborphan | xargs apt-get -y remove --purge

And that deletes everything u don't need.

Another good utility to help u keeping the system slim is debfoster. It's great for when you have installed a program that came with lots of dependencies and you decide to remove the program. Debfoster will make it easy to remove the program with all the dependencies it required.

This way I install X:
#apt-get install xlibs xutils xbase-clients xserver-xfree86 xfonts-base
And then xfonts-100dpi or 75dpi too. Though I see you use xorg and I have no experience with that.


To me your minimal install of 300MB looks very big. I'm sure you already added many of your programs to it?


If you type "apt-get clean" it'll remove all .deb files which apt downloaded to install the programs. That usually takes a lot of space too. Apt-get autoclean will only remove the old .deb files.
The files are located at /var/cache/apt/archives

grtz
guni

Thanks Gunnix for giving more information about using deborphan and debfoster. ALso, I read your home page for Debian and I found it really really helpful. It covers most of the common aspects of installing Linux and getting it working more importantly. :)

Well. i think i made a mistake, the min and mid installation sizes that I gave were with out using localepurge, deborphan and debfoster. So I guess I will able to reduce the sizes by 100 MB once I used these 3 tools and remove some man pages documentation. So my guess is that the sizes will look something like 200MB for minimal and 300MB for mid.

Gunnix, can you please tell me how to use debfoster or the command for it?

Does anyone knows how to compress the partition using squashfs and mounting them as a loopback device?

Thanks.

Well the command is debfoster :p. But you have to be root to use it.
It's best to start using debfoster directly after installing the base system. As it will ask you for every package installed if you want it or not. You should answer yes (to keep them) to all base packages if you don't know what you need (I remove some from the base, but be careful as removing some packages can make the system unbootable). From then on you can run debfoster once and a while so you only have the packages you want installed.

grtz

FOr those of you who are curious, Xorg is quite lightweight as compared to the XFree86. There was a difference of 50MB straightaway.

Does anyone have any idea when Xorg will become an official package for Debian.

Kushal