Minimal Openbox install on Eee PC 700.

[globetrotterdk]

I am a Mageia/Mandriva newbie and would like to install a minimal Openbox install on an Eee PC 700. I use the Eee mainly to surf the net or connected to my stereo and an external hard disk, as a jukebox. The documentation is rather sparse, so I am hoping someone can help me out.

[winstonteacox]

A good starting point would be the dual-arch cd:

http://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/dl.p ... d-dualarch

This installs a minimal-mageia with Openbox and LXDE.
It runs flawlessly on my two Eee PC 901.


Cheers,
Bernd

[djennings]

Since the eee 701 does not have a CD drive the best way to install it is by doing a network install using a boot loader on a USB flash
To do this install the file all.img from a Mageia mirror such as
ftp://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pu ... ll/images/

Copy it to a USB Flash with the command (for Linux, sorry I do not know the equivalent command in Windows)
dd if=all.img of=/dev/sdx
Where sdx is the device name for your **unmounted** USB Flash Be **very** careful to get the device name correct or else you could be overwriting your hard drive!!!

See http://www.mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=mageia_installation_media

Now the USB stick should be bootable. Set up your eee to boot from USB. It will boot up in a bootloader that will offer to install mageia from a variety of sources. Select FTP and it will set up the ethernet port of your eee and will find for itself an online Mageia mirror. Installation then proceeds as for the Mageia Free edition.
Remove the Flash stick as soon as the bootloader has loaded or else your device names could end up out of sequence after a reboot.

I recommend you do not try to install KDE on an eee 701. The ssd is not large enough and the ee701 is not fast enough to run kde4. Gnome will work OK.
On my own eee701 I use LXDE. LXDE is installed by default by Mageia. To avoid installing KDE or Gnome select 'Custom Install' when it asks what kind of install you want.
I think Openbox can be selected from a Custom install. If it is not available then install another DE such as blackbox and install openbox later using the Mageia Control Centre.

When you have finished you will need to reformat your USB Flash stick since installing the bootloader will have changed the capacity of the stick to just 10MB.

If you have an external CD drive and choose to install using the dual-arch CD as Bernd suggested then at the point where the installer asks if you have 'other media' select 'Yes>FTP' and so long as you have an Ethernet connection to the internet you will then proceed as if you were installing from the full Free DVD edition and will have access to applications not on the CD.

Good Luck.

[globetrotterdk]

Thanks for the replies guys. Sorry for the late reply. The forum doesn't seem to be sending e-mail notifications. I have already installed a minimum Ubuntu system on the Eee PC, but I have just installed and started using Mageia LXDE on my IBM T60 ThinkPad. I am impressed so far and am enjoying using Mageia very much

[isadora]

The forum doesn't seem to be sending e-mail notifications.

Are you sure???
Did you click "Subscribe topic" in the bottom left of the page???

[globetrotterdk]

Seems to be working now.

[globetrotterdk]

A good starting point would be the dual-arch cd:

Thanks Bernd. I tried the dual-arch on another laptop that I have and I have to say that I found the install to be confusing. Even when I went into the individual packages section, I got the impression that some of the bits were hidden from me. I didn't feel like I was getting a full overview of what was being installed. Not because I wanted to try and reduce the install further, but because I wanted to make sure that I had a functioning system.

[doktor5000]

I didn't feel like I was getting a full overview of what was being installed. Not because I wanted to try and reduce the install further, but because I wanted to make sure that I had a functioning system.

You suggest that the default Mageia dual arch install doesn't get you a functioning system?

[globetrotterdk]

Nope. I am complaining about what appeared to me to be incomplete transparency. in the minimal install configuration. For example, it looked to me as if rpmdrake was being installed despite my having specified that I didn't want a desktop (or gui at all). Is it at all possible to install a minimal install without any gui components, to start with? In Ubuntu I would do something like

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install xorg openbox obconf tint2 wicd xfce4-power-manager nitrogen synaptic cups

etc. after having booted into the non-gui system. I assume that the same is possible using urpmi and then the package names?

I did notice one thing of interest, which was that when I installed a minimal system on the same hard disk that I had a Mageia XFCE4 system running on, (after resizing partitions and adding new partitions) Grub didn't list both systems.

[doktor5000]

Is it at all possible to install a minimal install without any gui components, to start with? In Ubuntu I would do something like

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install xorg openbox obconf tint2 wicd xfce4-power-manager nitrogen synaptic cups

etc. after having booted into the non-gui system. I assume that the same is possible using urpmi and then the package names?

Huh? Now you tell that you don't want GUI elements, but still in your example install an X-server together with some GUI tools.
You can get a minimal Mageia install with urpmi basesystem or urpmi basesystem-minimal --no-suggests if you want it even smaller.

[globetrotterdk]

Huh? Now you tell that you don't want GUI elements, but still in your example install an X-server together with some GUI tools.
You can get a minimal Mageia install with urpmi basesystem or urpmi basesystem-minimal --no-suggests if you want it even smaller.

I am just looking for a minimal non-gui base for installing the gui bits that I want. So do I open up a virtual console when I boot from any of the boot media and issue one of the commands you listed? I would assume that I need to specify the preformatted partition /dev/sdX somehow and then switch back to the gui for installing grub or????

[doktor5000]

You can easily install from the DualArch CD and deselect graphical server, and install afterwards the bits you want.
Or from an all.img image and do a network install with only the packages you want like djennings already explained to you above.

Actually i don't know what your current problem is, the answers are all already there.

[globetrotterdk]

Actually i don't know what your current problem is, the answers are all already there.

Two major problems that stand in the way of what I would like to do:

1) The best alternative for installing a minimal GUI system seems to be installing an LXDE system and then trying to go through the system, take out the LXDE bits while still trying to keep important things like network manager on the system. Unfortunately urpm doesn't purge, so getting rid of the no longer needed LXDE + lib configuration files needs to be done manually. It isn't possible to install openbox, and choosing to install alternative window managers, installs a plethora of window managers, which I don't need. That leaves the user back with the same problem as above, just with more config files sprayed out in various places in the system, in accordance with the needs of the individual window manager, i.e. more files to get rid of.
2) The process of installing a cli only system as a starting point isn't completely transparent. From what I can ascertain, GUI components are installed despite having chosen not to install xorg or a window manager. Some like rpmdrake are easy to find, but a lot depends on what is included in the meta packages. The gui install doesn't include that information in the system installer. It is for some reason only available when you are installing packages on an already installed system.

Your proposal of installing from the command line seems interesting, but you haven't explained to me how it would work in practice when booting from a Mageia install medium, regardless of USB or CD, or whether it is network boot, dual arch or a live CD. That is why I am still looking for a solution.

[doktor5000]

Again i refer to the post of djennings: viewtopic.php?p=9212#p9212