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]

Originally Posted by nero

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/...e-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/o...n-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.

[s0xxx]

Originally Posted by JMJ_coder

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?

[ephemera]

Originally Posted by nero

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.

[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]

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

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Originally Posted by 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

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.pkg.../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.

[evilunixuser]

If you are concerned about available space on a harddrive, just run a live version off your cd-rom.

[fbsduser]

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

[aleunix]

I use my OpenBSD system on my 3 gb partition without problem.
Obviously i use a window manager (icewm) and don't the fat desktop manager.
I don't use heavy file manager as nautilus or the equivalent available on kde (i use xfe).
Doing the appropriate choices is possible.

Note:
Remember only that on BSD system you should have a primary partition available.