Full install now takes 16GB (amd64)

notzed · 04-25-2021, 08:20 PM

I was bored last night and wanted to play with qemu and have a look at some of the stuff I don't use like plasma (much better than the last kde but still a bit pants).

I created a 16GB cow2 disk and booted from the usb install image. I setup a single partition (no swap) and ran through a full install using defaults from my local mirror of slackware64-current. It installed fine but when starting up kde it warned me of a full disk. I was surprised to see 100% usage in df - although there was still a few hundred megabytes left.

The biggest package is grub2 but that's a bug fixed in 2.06 which is still in beta. Next are kernel-source, rust, and kernel-firmware.

Anyway I just thought it was a point of interest.

PS little perl script to find installed package sizes. Handles hardlinks but assumes one filesystem.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

$root='/';
$pkgs='/var/log/packages';
my %inodes;

opendir(DIR,$pkgs);
while (my $name = readdir(DIR)) {
    next if ($name =~ m/^\./);

    #print $name."\n";
    open (PKG, $pkgs.'/'.$name);
    while (my $line = <PKG>) {
	last if ($line =~ m/^FILE LIST:/);
    }
    my $total = 0;
    while (my $path = <PKG>) {
	chop $path;
	next if ($path =~ m@/$|^install@);
	my @s = lstat($root.$path);
	
	$total += $s[7] if !defined $inode{$s[1]};
	$inode{$s[1]} = 1;
    }
    print $total."\t".$name."\n";
    close(PKG);
}
closedir(DIR);

igadoter · 04-26-2021, 12:29 AM

No need to use grub in VM's. Like shooting a fly with cannon.

kukibl · 04-26-2021, 01:04 AM

That is for me personally one of the "painful" issues on Slackware.

STDOUBT · 04-26-2021, 01:05 AM

I noticed that recently setting up a laptop for Wife's friend,
(a Slackware64) - w/o KDE, installed size is 13G!
Friends, we're rolling in the deep :-D

STDOUBT · 04-26-2021, 01:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kukibl

That is for me personally one of the "painful" issues on Slackware.

Here's a nickle kid, go buy yourself a better computer!

LuckyCyborg · 04-26-2021, 01:28 AM

Now, I give to OP this homework:

put this 16GB Slackware full installation on a 8GB device, as big is the eMMC from two of my netbooks - and to remain enough space for a light web-browsing.

I for one I did this, but I am curious about on what design will go the OP.

fatmac · 04-26-2021, 03:39 AM

Yeah, Slack installs everything.....the main reason I changed (to Debian/Debian based) distros - I don't need everything - just what I use on a daily basis, even now it's less than 3GB installed.

I started out using Linux when RedHat 4.2 installed only 45MB, (OK, it was just command line, but even so)....

kukibl · 04-26-2021, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by STDOUBT

Here's a nickle kid, go buy yourself a better computer!

I am trying to find any sense in your answer, but without success. Is this supposed to be funny?

keithpeter · 04-26-2021, 04:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LuckyCyborg

put this 16GB Slackware full installation on a 8GB device, as big is the eMMC from two of my netbooks - and to remain enough space for a light web-browsing.

For a full installation, I'd have to cheat and use the current live slack (assuming the netbook can do 64bit which I imagine it won't). Just use persistence on the USB stick and put a swap partition and a data partition on the eMMC.

Otherwise it is a partial choice, as discussed for 14.2 here

Do I get 6/10 for effort?

crts · 04-26-2021, 04:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by STDOUBT

Here's a nickle kid, go buy yourself a better computer!

I was trying to see the relevance in your answer. It does not make sense. You must be one of those blabbering buffoons that just need to generate some noise every now and then.

LuckyCyborg · 04-26-2021, 05:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by keithpeter

For a full installation, I'd have to cheat and use the current live slack (assuming the netbook can do 64bit which I imagine it won't). Just use persistence on the USB stick and put a swap partition and a data partition on the eMMC.

Otherwise it is a partial choice, as discussed for 14.2 here

Do I get 6/10 for effort?

Well, my take was a F2FS partition for root (aka /) because the old generation of eMMC device, and putting the /usr content on a squashfs file generated on another system (and reference rysnc tree prepared on a portable USB hard drive) . This required also modifications on initrd, of course.

I chosen this solution because this way the /etc content was editable as usual, I can freely test different kernels (without /usr/src/linux-x.y.z which is not included anyway) because the /lib was also natively writable, and more important: the /home was just standard and writable.

BTW, this way I got around 5GB occupied by system (including the Plasma5 from KTown), leaving around 3GB for user data - more than enough for web browsing and watching YouTube.

keithpeter · 04-26-2021, 05:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LuckyCyborg

BTW, this way I got around 5GB occupied by system (including the Plasma5 from KTown), leaving around 3GB for user data - more than enough for web browsing and watching YouTube.

That is impressive and I'll do some reading out of interest.

I imagine that the use of a compressed file system means higher processor load as parts of the compressed file system are uncompressed when being loaded into RAM so a trade off (as always).

LuckyCyborg · 04-26-2021, 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by keithpeter

That is impressive and I'll do some reading out of interest.

I imagine that the use of a compressed file system means higher processor load as parts of the compressed file system are uncompressed when being loaded into RAM so a trade off (as always).

Yes, of course there's a CPU load trade off, BUT it's lighter than when using also an UNION FS (in the USB live style), and in other hand, overall, the system feels much more responsive, as those old eMMC have only around 50MB/s read rate, then the compressed data is loaded much faster.

Around 3 times faster, in my subjective opinion.

solarfields · 04-26-2021, 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by STDOUBT

Here's a nickle kid, go buy yourself a better computer!

I'm a poor Eastern European and cannot afford a better computer. What shall I do, man?

rkelsen · 04-26-2021, 06:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by notzed

Anyway I just thought it was a point of interest.

Yeah, but you won't find another OS that is anywhere near as complete out of the box.

The size of Slackware is a point of excellence, IMO... It's the same size as Windows, but significantly more capable.