BSD sizes

[nero]

I would like to mess around with several BSD flavors. I can spare only 2~2.5 G harddrive space on my laptop for experimentation.

I looked thru the BIG 3 sites but was only able to determine that OpenBSD can be installed, very minimally, in roughly 700~750 M. What about Free or NetBSD? Or any other for that matter.

Is it possible to learn about BSD on such a small system? I only would like to use a small browser and a fluxbox-or-less wm. Any encouragement or suggestions...or am I whistling up my butt?

Any responses appreciated. Thanks.

[vermaden]

It will be possible with all FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD.

For FreeBSD it will be Custom install and select these:
base [x]
kernels --> GENERIC [x]
man [x]
xorg [x]

then pkg_add -r fluxbox and you are done.

If you have such small space, then you may create just one big / filesystem.

You may also rebuild FreeBSD base system with custom NO_*= yes options in /etc/src.conf to make it even smaller, but that would require additional 400mb space for /usr/src tree and a place for just built base system in /usr/obj with about additional 200mb.

[ocicat]

I looked thru the BIG 3 sites but was only able to determine that OpenBSD can be installed, very minimally, in roughly 700~750 M.
Correct. See Section 4.7 of OpenBSD's FAQ:

http://openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Partitioning
What about Free or NetBSD?
For NetBSD, see Section 2.2.4 of The NetBSD Guide:

http://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-inst.html#chap-inst-install-disk-space-requirements

If you have ample RAM (1GB+), I would suggest not installing swap space for any of the *BSD's. If you have 512MB or less, you could experiment with what happens when no swap is configured... ;)
Any encouragement or suggestions...or am I whistling up my butt?
If you have an external (USB) drive, you could move /home to it freeing space for /usr as this is where applications will be installed.

You can also experiment with moving /tmp to memory which will free up more disk space.

In addition on OpenBSD, the following may give you other ideas about what other tricks can be used. Although each references OpenBSD 3.7, I employ most techniques on a 4GB Eee PC running OpenBSD 4.3-current with no problems:

http://www.kaschwig.net/projects/openbsd/wrap/
http://blog.innerewut.de/2005/05/14/openbsd-3-7-on-wrap
http://blog.innerewut.de/2005/5/19/openbsd-3-7-on-wrap-revised

These articles refer to installing OpenBSD on (resource challenged...) Soekris appliances which are popular as firewalls.

[Carpetsmoker]

I looked through the BIG 3 sites but was only able to determine that OpenBSD can be installed, very minimally, in roughly 700~750 M. What about Free or NetBSD? Or any other for that matter.

I used to run NetBSD (3.0 I think, not sure) on my SPARCStation, which had, IIRC a 1GB hard disk...

FreeBSD doesn't take up that much space either, my server (Where quite a few ports are installed) only uses ~800-900MB, and I guess you can trim that down to ~500-600MB if you wanted...

[TerryP]

If you do use a /home on an external media (USB stick, drive, etc) make sure to use a file system each system can read and write to.

Somehow I doubt that Free, Net, and OpenBSDs ffs/ufs implementations are 'close enough' to be mountable read write without issues, at least as far as Free and Net/OpenBSD are concerned.

[lvlamb]

I have a OpenBSD full install (with X) on a thumdrive.
Plus
# ls /mnt/var/db/pkg
gettext-0.16.1 libiconv-1.12 pcre-7.6 zip-2.32
glib2-2.16.1 mc-4.6.1p1 unzip-5.52p0

df gives
/dev/sd0a 2065116 1691876 269988 86% /mnt

fully rw as usual on any sort of drive.

[IdOp]

I installed NetBSD 4.0, and OpenBSD 4.3, each on a 2.7 GB partition recently. Lots of space left over. Mind you, I'm not planning to compile kernels anytime soon. ;)

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

For NetBSD - a nearly full installation (all distribution sets but X - that is: Kernel; Base; System (/etc); Compiler Tools; Games; Online Manual Pages; Miscellaneous; Text Processing Tools) takes up 250MB. Adding pkgsrc adds another 408MB. Various packages take up their space.

My total system (with packages such as - tcsh; vim; mutt; mc; perl; php; python; vorbis-tools; etc.) is 842MB. I could delete pkgsrc (I don't need to get any more packages at this time) and get it down to 434MB.


Hope this helps.

[ephemera]

Is it possible to learn about BSD on such a small system? I only would like to use a small browser and a fluxbox-or-less wm.Sure. :)
*BSD with a simple wm, a few terminal windows, a browser (and a few other essential apps) is all you will ever need to learn *nix. :cool:

[s0xxx]

My total system (with packages such as - tcsh; vim; mutt; mc; perl; php; python; vorbis-tools; etc.) is 842MB. I could delete pkgsrc (I don't need to get any more packages at this time) and get it down to 434MB.
Or just use binary instead of source packages and there is no need for full pkgsrc if space is a deal. ;)

FreeBSD has a tool called misc/porteasy, I don't know if other have similar tools for installing ports (source packages that is) without actually getting the ports tree?

[anomie]

FreeBSD has a tool called misc/porteasy

Good tip -- first time I have heard of it. Note that it has moved to ports-mgmt/porteasy.

[Oko]

Or just use binary instead of source packages and there is no need for full pkgsrc if space is a deal. ;)

FreeBSD has a tool called misc/porteasy, I don't know if other have similar tools for installing ports (source packages that is) without actually getting the ports tree?

Well I think that the binary package is definitely the way to go since If he
does not have space to install ports structure he definitely has no space to install compilers, building tools, and to compile the thing. People usually forget that the building process produces lots of junk which they clean at the end. For instance when I build 10-20 ports at once on OpenBSD the junk might be a couple of GB. So it is a BIG deal. If there is no package for particular port he should build it on another machine and use it as repo. That can be done on all four BSDs.

Best,
OKO

[cajunman4life]

...he definitely has no space to install compilers, building tools...

Dunno what BSD you use, but on FreeBSD this stuff is in the base install. IIRC in NetBSD (and likely OpenBSD due to it's heritage as a NetBSD child) the compiler set was optional. But at least for FreeBSD, you get the compilers in the base system.

[ephemera]

the freebsd source code can be deselected at the time of installation. but there's generally no good reason not to install it.
i find it very useful that the source code for the _whole_ system is readily available (/usr/src and /usr/ports/*).

[s0xxx]

Good tip -- first time I have heard of it. Note that it has moved to ports-mgmt/porteasy.
Gee, thanx. ;) I used it once on a server that didn't make it into production... :D I first heard of it here (nice reference): http://www.nycbug.org/files/20050623120603_dru_lavigne_servers_tutorial.pdf

Nice tool when you can't get the whole ports tree, or need a few ports and don't want to get the whole ports tree. :)
Other option is to build port with options needed somewhere else, make a package and transfer it to machine, pretty much like Oko said.

If you are planning on moving /tmp to RAM I recommend tmpfs (http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/tmpfs/) in stead of mfs (it is in NetBSD and ported to FreeBSD).

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Speaking of BSD in small situations, I wonder how well something like this (http://www.fit-pc.com/new/) or this (http://www.inveneo.org/?q=Computingstation) would work with *BSD?

[s0xxx]

Well, you can ask this guy who claims to run NetBSD on it. ;)

http://daemonforums.org/showpost.php?p=7983&postcount=7

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Well, you can ask this guy who claims to run NetBSD on it. ;)

http://daemonforums.org/showpost.php?p=7983&postcount=7

I saw that post right after I posted here. I PM'd him about how they do.

[Oko]

Dunno what BSD you use, but on FreeBSD this stuff is in the base install. IIRC in NetBSD (and likely OpenBSD due to it's heritage as a NetBSD child) the compiler set was optional. But at least for FreeBSD, you get the compilers in the base system.

I use OpenBSD which I mentioned in my message. You could also conclude that from my avatar:rolleyes:. During the OpenBSD installation one may select not to install compilers i.e. compXX.tgz

Kind Regards,
OKO


P. S. It is quite easy to strip down FreeBSD to bare bones. You have a tool called
NanoBSD in the base which will enable you to create small image of FreeBSD for embedded devices. Michael Lucas have gone over that tool quite a bit
in his book Absolute FreeBSD. I think that you can strip down FreeBSD to less than 16 maybe even 8 MB. I also know for the fact that it is possible to strip OpenBSD to fit in a size of the floppy disk 1.44MB and still have most network tools and PF.:D Something like this guy did http://www.freebsd.nfo.sk/opbsd/openbsdeng.htm

[s0xxx]

Possibly not related to "shrinking BSD" but to resurrect the thread a bit, if you want to compile ports and DON'T want to get the ports tree OR install porteasy (which will handle the dependencies port skeletons as well) you could do it "the manual way" using cvs that comes with the base, as explained in this hack in BSD Hacks book:

Build a Port Without the Ports Tree (http://oreilly.com/catalog/bsdhks/chapter/hack82.pdf)

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Possibly not related to "shrinking BSD" but to resurrect the thread a bit, if you want to compile ports and DON'T want to get the ports tree OR install porteasy (which will handle the dependencies port skeletons as well) you could do it "the manual way" using cvs that comes with the base, as explained in this hack in BSD Hacks book:

Build a Port Without the Ports Tree (http://oreilly.com/catalog/bsdhks/chapter/hack82.pdf)

I am sure the answer is yes, but - does the same apply to pkgsrc? And if so, how? (at least point me to the documentation)

[s0xxx]

Frankly I don't know, I never tried it as I'm fairly new to NetBSD and pkgsrc. If I get some time tonight I will try to play around with it and check (I'm not home ATM).
See this:

http://osdir.com/ml/netbsd.devel.pkgsrc.user/2006-09/msg00024.html

[s0xxx]

OK, I just tested it quickly, it seems to work:
cvs co pkgsrc/mk
cvs pkgsrc/pkgtools/pkgfind
And I could compile and install the tool. Will do some more testing later.

[fbsduser]

Wow. That fit PC is awesome to put a *NIX on it. Any local store in Panamá (the country) that stocks them?