minimizing harddisk space for Gentoo install

[TWolf]

Hi,

I have installed Gentoo on a system with limited harddisk space. Gentoo is used merely for a internetsharing and as aFTP server with the occasional KDE usage.

How can I limit the use of the harddisk space required?
Are there packages I can safely remove, like the audio of KDE or themes and the like?

Can someone redirect me to some info about this?

Thanks in advance.
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[kirill]

Gentoo base install really *minimal*. You can't delete that many proggies from there, well maby raidtools, reiserfstools, depends on if you use them.

You may want to search the forums on tips how to keep the disk space usage low. Start here.
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--kirill

[phong]

A couple things you can do - use -Os in your CFLAGS to optimize executables for size (note that this isn't a big performance hit, the resultant executables are almost as fast as those optimized with -O2 or -O3, and MUCH faster than -O0 or -O1). Also, you can periodically delete everything in /usr/portage/distfiles as well as blow out any leftover stuff in /var/tmp/portage.

A thread also recently popped up about executable compression which can save quite a bit of space. I'm guessing that program would perform somewhat better (sizewise) with something like -O3 rather than -Os because it would create more redundant code which it could take advantage of (similar to how bzip2ing a gif file won't get as small a file as using bzip2 on the uncompressed image). I think I'm going to start playing with it myself at home even though I have plenty of space, because it looks like it improves performance.

As for uneccesary packages - when you emerge kde, just do "emerge kde-base/kdebase" and that will install the base set of KDE packages and dependancies instead of EVERYTHING. Then you can emerge additional portions if you need them (I use kdemultimedia, for example, but I never use kdeedu). Also, KDE is pretty bloated, so if you're REALLY cramped for space, you may want to try a more minimalistic WM like fluxbox.

edit: Also, try adjusting your USE variables. Look at /etc/make.profile/make.defaults. If you see things in there that you don't want to compile in support for, add a "minus" version to your /etc/make.conf. I.e. if you don't want to compile in support for quicktime, change your USE in your make.conf to include "-quicktime". That can save you some space.
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"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."
-- Eric Hoffer

[TWolf]

OK, thank you both. I will certainly try to figure it out!
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