[gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Shoka]

Hello group,

I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
need is

- X11 and a Window Manager
- Mozilla Firefox
- Lighttpd

I use Gnome at this time.

du reports the following directories as the biggest directories on my
system:

/usr/lib        418 MB
/usr/portage   1200 MB
/usr/share      550 MB
/usr/src        560 MB (Kernel Sources)

The other directories are very small.

I think, the system is quite heavy in size, isn't it? I really would
like to be able to shrink it down but not loosing functionality.

Now I'm looking for tips to reduce disk consumption further. I've
already cleaned /usr/portage/distfiles.

I read that removing the whole /usr/portage after setting up the system
is not a good idea. Is that true?

May be someone could recommend a better window manager (smaller in size,
stable)?

I really appreciate any kind of recommendation to this topic.


Kind regards,
André

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 6:48 AM, Shoka <shoka@gmx.ch> wrote:
> Hello group,
>
> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
> need is
>
> - X11 and a Window Manager
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Lighttpd
>
> I use Gnome at this time.
>
> du reports the following directories as the biggest directories on my
> system:
>
> /usr/lib        418 MB
> /usr/portage   1200 MB
> /usr/share      550 MB
> /usr/src        560 MB (Kernel Sources)
>
> The other directories are very small.
>
> I think, the system is quite heavy in size, isn't it? I really would
> like to be able to shrink it down but not loosing functionality.
>
> Now I'm looking for tips to reduce disk consumption further. I've
> already cleaned /usr/portage/distfiles.
>
> I read that removing the whole /usr/portage after setting up the system
> is not a good idea. Is that true?
>
> May be someone could recommend a better window manager (smaller in size,
> stable)?
>
> I really appreciate any kind of recommendation to this topic.
>
>
> Kind regards,
> André
>
>
>

/usr/portage/distfiles probably includes all the source which you
don't strictly need to keep if you don't mind downloading it again at
a future date. You can remove that.

/usr/src could be reduced to one source tree.

HTH,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Shoka]

On 30.06.2010 15:56, Mark Knecht wrote:

> 
> /usr/src could be reduced to one source tree.
> 
> HTH,
> Mark
> 

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately I don't fully understand. What do you mean by "reducing to
one source tree"?

Regards
andré

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Crístian Viana]

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>
> What do you mean by "reducing to one source tree"?


inside /usr/src, there may be more than one subdirectory, one for each
kernel version you've ever had. you can purge the older kernel directories,
just "rm -rf" on them. do not delete your current kernel directory: use
"eselect kernel list" (or "uname -r") to find out what's your current
version.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Jake Moe]

On 01/07/10 00:52, Crístian Viana wrote:
>> What do you mean by "reducing to one source tree"?
>>     
>
> inside /usr/src, there may be more than one subdirectory, one for each
> kernel version you've ever had. you can purge the older kernel directories,
> just "rm -rf" on them. do not delete your current kernel directory: use
> "eselect kernel list" (or "uname -r") to find out what's your current
> version.
>
>   
I'd use eselect to make sure you're using the latest kernel, and then
use "emerge --depclean" to get rid of any others that are there.

depclean would probably be a good idea anyway, depending on how long the
system has been around, to get rid of anything that's not needed anymore.

Jake Moe

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Dale]

Shoka wrote:
> On 30.06.2010 15:56, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>    
>> /usr/src could be reduced to one source tree.
>>
>> HTH,
>> Mark
>>
>>      
> Hi Mark,
>
> Unfortunately I don't fully understand. What do you mean by "reducing to
> one source tree"?
>
> Regards
> andré
>
>    

If you have more than one kernel source installed, remove all but the 
one you are using.  I, for example, have three sources that I always 
keep.  One old kernel that I know works well, one that I am currently 
using and one that I have not yet switched to yet.  I tend to clean out 
the rest.

Since space is a issue for you, you really only need the kernel sources 
for the kernel you are using.  One could argue that if you have a well 
built kernel and don't plan to change it in the future, you could remove 
its sources too.  I would save a copy of the config tho.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:54:20 -0500, Dale wrote:

> Since space is a issue for you, you really only need the kernel sources 
> for the kernel you are using.  One could argue that if you have a well 
> built kernel and don't plan to change it in the future, you could
> remove its sources too.  I would save a copy of the config tho.

I'd certainly argue that. A single set of sources can take up more than
half a gigabyte after compilation. If you use make install to install the
kernel, it puts a backup of the config in /boot automatically.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Kyle Bader]

>> Since space is a issue for you, you really only need the kernel sources
>> for the kernel you are using.  One could argue that if you have a well
>> built kernel and don't plan to change it in the future, you could
>> remove its sources too.  I would save a copy of the config tho.
>
> I'd certainly argue that. A single set of sources can take up more than
> half a gigabyte after compilation. If you use make install to install the
> kernel, it puts a backup of the config in /boot automatically.

It is also good to keep the System.map and vmlinux file in case you or
someone else needs to debug your kernel traces.

-- 

Kyle

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Kyle Bader <kyle.bader@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Since space is a issue for you, you really only need the kernel sources
>>> for the kernel you are using.  One could argue that if you have a well
>>> built kernel and don't plan to change it in the future, you could
>>> remove its sources too.  I would save a copy of the config tho.
>>
>> I'd certainly argue that. A single set of sources can take up more than
>> half a gigabyte after compilation. If you use make install to install the
>> kernel, it puts a backup of the config in /boot automatically.
>
> It is also good to keep the System.map and vmlinux file in case you or
> someone else needs to debug your kernel traces.
>
> --
>
> Kyle

Also, if you want to get rid of source but keep the tree you can do
make clean (I think) to get rid of the stuff that got built.

Always keep .confg AND make sure your running kernel supports
/proc/config.gz as a second means of not losing info.

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:05:30 -0700, Kyle Bader wrote:

> > I'd certainly argue that. A single set of sources can take up more
> > than half a gigabyte after compilation. If you use make install to
> > install the kernel, it puts a backup of the config in /boot
> > automatically.  
> 
> It is also good to keep the System.map and vmlinux file in case you or
> someone else needs to debug your kernel traces.

Those are also installed to /boot by make install.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers
believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet."

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OT: Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Peter Humphrey]

On Wednesday 30 June 2010 17:18:48 Neil Bothwick wrote:

> Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers
> believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet."

No, that's only software engineers. Real engineers would have no truck 
with it.

-- 
Rgds
Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:54:20 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>    
>> Since space is a issue for you, you really only need the kernel sources
>> for the kernel you are using.  One could argue that if you have a well
>> built kernel and don't plan to change it in the future, you could
>> remove its sources too.  I would save a copy of the config tho.
>>      
> I'd certainly argue that. A single set of sources can take up more than
> half a gigabyte after compilation. If you use make install to install the
> kernel, it puts a backup of the config in /boot automatically.
>
>    

This is one of those questions that is like 'how much swap do I need'?  
It depends on your goals.  With Gentoo, you can really slim down a lot 
of stuff.  Disabled USE flags for unneeded things, remove packages that 
are not needed, clean out distfiles and binaries in *packages/All then 
disable buildpkg in make.conf.  There is a lot of things that can be 
done to reduce the install.  Heck, if they can put Gentoo on a guitar, 
it's got to be pretty small.

I also like the post someone else made.  Run it like a embedded system.  
That is really small from what I have read, or can be at least.

Oh, I still do my kernel installs the manual way.  I have a weird way of 
naming my kernels so that I know at a glance what is what.  I also name 
the config the same as the kernels so that I know which config goes with 
which kernel.  I have had to back up once or twice.  Nothing like a net 
to catch us when something fails or falls.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Shoka <shoka@gmx.ch> wrote:
> On 30.06.2010 15:56, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>>
>> /usr/src could be reduced to one source tree.
>>
>> HTH,
>> Mark
>>
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> Unfortunately I don't fully understand. What do you mean by "reducing to
> one source tree"?
>
> Regards
> andré
>
>

Hello Andre,
   OK - I think others have explained that if you have ever had more
than 1 kernel on the machine then you may still have old source code
trees. Get rid of the ones you aren't using.

   Related but not a lot of diskspace - don't forget to clean up any
unused module directories for kernels no longer on the system.

   Others noted Gnome. I find XFCE to be 98% the same user experience
for 15% of the build time. I expect you would find it very reasonable
as a Gnome user. I've used fluxbox and it's great, but it's very, very
different and may be more of a change than you want to deal with.

   Sorry on the distfiles suggestion. When I reread your post I
finally saw that you had already taken care of that.

   One related thing is that should an ebuild die portage often leaves
behind big build directories of the work it was doing. They can be
cleaned up also. Look for the word 'work' or 'WORK' where code gets
built.

   Look at log file sizes. They can grow over time. Some tools that
create log files can limit there sizes or there are ways to compress
and rotate if that suits your needs.

   I suspect your biggest immediate win after distfiles would be with
XFCE. (and emerge -C gnome)

Good luck,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Mick]

On 30 June 2010 14:48, Shoka <shoka@gmx.ch> wrote:
> Hello group,
>
> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
> need is
>
> - X11 and a Window Manager
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Lighttpd
>
> I use Gnome at this time.

Both Gnome and KDE are not for lightweight systems.  You may want to try:

Black/Open/Fluxbox.  They can be made to look really snazzy if you're
prepared to spend time on it, although their vanilla configuration
just works if you're only after functionality.

LXDE and Enlightenment are also lightweight and have more features
than the above.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Andy Wilkinson]

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On 06/30/10 06:48, Shoka wrote:
> Hello group,
>
> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
> need is
>
> - X11 and a Window Manager
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Lighttpd
>
> I use Gnome at this time.
>
> du reports the following directories as the biggest directories on my
> system:
>
> /usr/lib        418 MB
> /usr/portage   1200 MB
> /usr/share      550 MB
> /usr/src        560 MB (Kernel Sources)
>
> The other directories are very small.
>
> I think, the system is quite heavy in size, isn't it? I really would
> like to be able to shrink it down but not loosing functionality.
>
> Now I'm looking for tips to reduce disk consumption further. I've
> already cleaned /usr/portage/distfiles.
>
> I read that removing the whole /usr/portage after setting up the system
> is not a good idea. Is that true?
>
> May be someone could recommend a better window manager (smaller in size,
> stable)?
>
> I really appreciate any kind of recommendation to this topic.
>
>
> Kind regards,
> André
>
>
>   
If you're looking to save size in /usr/portage, you might consider
squashing it ( http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Squashed_Portage_Tree). 
Portage is a few hundred thousand files IIRC and most filesystems don't
cope with that very well.  My portage sqfs is one file about 47 MB. 
This has the side effect of making portage lookups a lot faster, as
well, since it's all kept in RAM.  It's a bit of work, and adds
complexity to kernel upgrades, but it's been worthwhile for me.

Also, Gnome is not a particularly minimal or light desktop
environment.    In fact, quite the opposite.  You could probably save a
lot of space by switching to xfce or lxde or something like that, if you
don't need all of the fluff in Gnome.  There's also a gnome-light meta
that cuts out some of the extras, if you want to keep the Gnome
look-and-feel.  I'm using xfce after a long time with Gnome and didn't
find the transition difficult at all.  I did wind up compiling a few of
my gnome-specific tools (banshee, gthumb in particular) which brought in
some gnome libraries, but the gnome meta still offers to pull in about a
hundred new packages.

-Andy

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[gentoo-user] Re: Minimal Gentoo with X

[James]

Shoka <shoka <at> gmx.ch> writes:


> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
> need is
> - X11 and a Window Manager
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Lighttpd

If I were you, I'd pose this question over at embedded-gentoo, if you really
want to get serious about minimization. Gentoo-user is more focused on complete
systems. Once you go down the path of reducing packages that are normally 
on a gentoo system (server or workstation) you may end up all alone
and broken.......


Besides, there are some very 'brights minds' on the gentoo-embedded list
and what they do, is build minimal systems all the time....

caveat emptor.....

hth,
James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Minimal Gentoo with X

[Peter Humphrey]

On Wednesday 30 June 2010 16:01:21 James wrote:

> caveat emptor...

That's not a very helpful comment on this list, where we all try to help 
one another.

-- 
Rgds
Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.

[gentoo-user] Re: Minimal Gentoo with X

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-06-30, Shoka <shoka@gmx.ch> wrote:

> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
> need is
>
> - X11 and a Window Manager
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Lighttpd
>
> I use Gnome at this time.

Gnome?!?!

That's like saying "all I needed was a couple of deck chairs, so I
bought the Queen Mary".

One step towards smaller/lighter would be the XFCE desktop instead of
Gnome.  While a lot smaller/faster than Gnuome, XFCE is still far from
"minimal".

If you want more minimal, then I'd try icewm, fvwm, or blackbox/fluxbox.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Don't hit me!!  I'm in
                                  at               the Twilight Zone!!!
                              gmail.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Minimal Gentoo with X

[Shoka]

On 30.06.2010 17:03, Grant Edwards wrote:

> 
> Gnome?!?!
> 
> That's like saying "all I needed was a couple of deck chairs, so I
> bought the Queen Mary".
> 
> One step towards smaller/lighter would be the XFCE desktop instead of
> Gnome.  While a lot smaller/faster than Gnuome, XFCE is still far from
> "minimal".
> 
> If you want more minimal, then I'd try icewm, fvwm, or blackbox/fluxbox.
> 

Hi Grant,

*hehe* yes, I've just realized that this doesn't really make sense at
all. I think I'll switch to fluxbox and give it a try.

thanks anyway for your thoughts.

regards,
andré

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Minimal Gentoo with X

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:03:27 +0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote:

> Gnome?!?!
> 
> That's like saying "all I needed was a couple of deck chairs, so I
> bought the Queen Mary".

PMSL :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

All things in moderation, ESPECIALLY moderation.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Minimal Gentoo with X

[Bill Longman]

On 06/30/2010 08:03 AM, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2010-06-30, Shoka <shoka@gmx.ch> wrote:
> 
>> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
>> need is
>>
>> - X11 and a Window Manager
>> - Mozilla Firefox
>> - Lighttpd
>>
>> I use Gnome at this time.
> 
> Gnome?!?!
> 
> That's like saying "all I needed was a couple of deck chairs, so I
> bought the Queen Mary".
> 
> One step towards smaller/lighter would be the XFCE desktop instead of
> Gnome.  While a lot smaller/faster than Gnuome, XFCE is still far from
> "minimal".
> 
> If you want more minimal, then I'd try icewm, fvwm, or blackbox/fluxbox.

I agree with Grant and others. XFCE is the other WM on my machines. On
my old PIII with 256MB RAM, it's really the only option. KDE for the
ones with the power, but that's far from "light".

But my personal "light" window manager fave of all time is ratpoison.
That's what goes on the servers....

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Minimal Gentoo with X

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:17:00 -0700, Bill Longman wrote:

> I agree with Grant and others. XFCE is the other WM on my machines. On
> my old PIII with 256MB RAM, it's really the only option. KDE for the
> ones with the power, but that's far from "light".

I really like LXDE now, I use it on my netbook.

> But my personal "light" window manager fave of all time is ratpoison.
> That's what goes on the servers....

The best WM for a server is screen :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Middle-age - because your age starts to show at your middle.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Minimal Gentoo with X

[Bill Longman]

On 06/30/2010 09:20 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:17:00 -0700, Bill Longman wrote:
> 
>> I agree with Grant and others. XFCE is the other WM on my machines. On
>> my old PIII with 256MB RAM, it's really the only option. KDE for the
>> ones with the power, but that's far from "light".
> 
> I really like LXDE now, I use it on my netbook.
> 
>> But my personal "light" window manager fave of all time is ratpoison.
>> That's what goes on the servers....
> 
> The best WM for a server is screen :)

LOL!

Before I pressed "SEND," I was going to add to my sentence, "because it
works great with screen".

Screen and units get installed on all my machines. If you like a "light"
system and can do most of your work in links, who needs X?

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Arttu V.]

On 6/30/10, Shoka <shoka@gmx.ch> wrote:
> Hello group,
>
> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
> need is
>
> - X11 and a Window Manager
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Lighttpd
>
> I use Gnome at this time.
>
> du reports the following directories as the biggest directories on my
> system:
>
> /usr/lib        418 MB
> /usr/portage   1200 MB
> /usr/share      550 MB
> /usr/src        560 MB (Kernel Sources)
>
> The other directories are very small.
>
> I think, the system is quite heavy in size, isn't it? I really would
> like to be able to shrink it down but not loosing functionality.
>
> Now I'm looking for tips to reduce disk consumption further. I've
> already cleaned /usr/portage/distfiles.
>
> I read that removing the whole /usr/portage after setting up the system
> is not a good idea. Is that true?
>
> May be someone could recommend a better window manager (smaller in size,
> stable)?
>
> I really appreciate any kind of recommendation to this topic.

Advice given so far seems to assume that you only have this one
system. But if you have another system that can take care of compiling
and building binary pkgs then you can probably slice off the 50MB+ or
more out of gcc, autotools, and such as well. In effect, turning
Gentoo into your very own, private binary distro.

As already mentioned, the embedded folks probably know this
intimately. Also, see the portage man page for defining your own
system set (without, e.g., gcc and autoconf), and man page of emerge
for option --buildpkg (and also other --*pkg* options of emerge).

Good luck, have fun!

-- 
Arttu V. -- Running Gentoo is like running with scissors

Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo with X

[Shoka]

On 30.06.2010 15:48, Shoka wrote:
> Hello group,
> 
> I'm trying to build kind of a minimal gentoo setup with X support. All I
> need is
> 
> - X11 and a Window Manager
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Lighttpd
> 
> I use Gnome at this time.
> 
> du reports the following directories as the biggest directories on my
> system:
> 
> /usr/lib        418 MB
> /usr/portage   1200 MB
> /usr/share      550 MB
> /usr/src        560 MB (Kernel Sources)
> 
> The other directories are very small.
> 
> I think, the system is quite heavy in size, isn't it? I really would
> like to be able to shrink it down but not loosing functionality.
> 
> Now I'm looking for tips to reduce disk consumption further. I've
> already cleaned /usr/portage/distfiles.
> 
> I read that removing the whole /usr/portage after setting up the system
> is not a good idea. Is that true?
> 
> May be someone could recommend a better window manager (smaller in size,
> stable)?
> 
> I really appreciate any kind of recommendation to this topic.
> 
> 
> Kind regards,
> André
> 
> 

Hello folks,

Thank you all for giving me your thoughts and for sharing your
experience with me. I really appreciate that.

I think I'll give XFCE a try and have a more detailed look in all the
mentioned cleanup commands posted here in this thread.

SquashFS seems to be a good possibility to shrink the portage tree to a
minimum. I take a dive into the docs and possibly give it a try too :)

Thank you
André