Install to small (2gb) disk?

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Install to small (2gb) disk?

Postby TinyDisk » Nov 30th, '21, 20:21

Hi.. I'm not entirely crazy, I have an old via epia board with a 2gb disk on module installed, and I'm attempting to configure it as a basic RF to composite converter (using a bt848 card as input, and the onboard composite/svideo output).

Seeing as it's a via epia cpu, it works well with i586 stuff, but the problem is that 2gb disk just isn't large enough.. but then I don't really need most of the distribution, just enough to either run xawtv, or even just fbtv.

The boot cd installer works, but gives up when it realises just how much space there isn't. But I'm guessing it would be fine if I could just coerce it into only installing the bits I want ;p (or alternatively installing the bits I need by hand).. once installed tho, the cdrom drive is being removed (it's hanging out the front of the case on a cable at the mo).. as the system will just be single purpose, running enough to read/tune from the bt848, and display out via the svideo/composite ports. (Why? because I have some older retro kit that does PAL, while I live in an NTSC area, but do have a bunch of PAL bt848 cards from years ago.. and this feels like a fun mini project).

I'm comfortable with the console, and I've been hacking around with linux for decades, more than happy to give anything a shot here.. even if I can just get a basic console only install, with a working package manager, I can likely take it from there.

Can anyone help me get that far? or is this a lost cause?
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Re: Install to small (2gb) disk?

Postby doktor5000 » Nov 30th, '21, 23:19

A minimal install with urpmi without installing recommends is around 300 MB IIRC. That is the bare minimum.
Although both for xawtv and fbtv you need basic libraries for an X server, which makes it overall around 500MB.
For the installer, best use the netinstaller: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation ... k_Installs

FWIW, you can test a minimal install locally beforehand by letting urpmi install into a chroot, with the below commands
(for the second urpmi command I've ommited --auto as then it will show a summary of the required disk space and download sizes.)

Code: Select all
ch_root=/chroot_root
mirror=ftp://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mageia/distrib/8/x86_64/
optional="xawtv fbtv"
urpmi.addmedia --distrib --urpmi-root ${ch_root} ${mirror}
urpmi --auto --urpmi-root ${ch_root} basesystem urpmi ${optional}
urpmi --no-recommends --urpmi-root ${ch_root} basesystem-minimal-core urpmi ${optional}


Although you're probably better of simply connecting some kind of SD or other card read and use that to extend the 2GB.
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Re: Install to small (2gb) disk?

Postby jiml8 » Dec 2nd, '21, 17:14

You might take a look at installations that are targeted for devices such as yours. I have had good luck with Tiny Core Linux in some specific circumstances; it boots fast and is useable. http://www.tinycorelinux.net/

You might also look into OpenWRT. Since last July, I have been migrating our software product from FreeBSD to Linux in response to huge changes in our market due to the pandemic, and I am using OpenWRT as the base distro. It is intended for small and tight installations, and provides a great deal of capability as well as a large user community and very active development. https://openwrt.org/
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Re: Install to small (2gb) disk?

Postby JoesCat » Dec 25th, '21, 01:05

run strip on all directories.
You'll lose debug information, but the files will be smaller if they haven't been stripped yet.

mount a 2nd 2GB USB stick for additional space. Offload some directories onto the 2nd USB stick, maybe like /tmp /var /opt /usr
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