Deleting devel packages to make sub-500MB system

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EmptyDoor · Post by **EmptyDoor** » Thu May 04, 2006 9:54 pm

I am building systems for some very old computers at our school. By having a script that removes the Portage tree, kernel source and some devel packages when making the final system tarballs, I have managed to press the system size down to 539 MB. However, most of the computers have 500 - 540 MB hard drivers. Are there any other devel packages that are not required for running programs?

The once I have found so far are
gcc binutils automake autoconf libtool m4 make patch splash-themes-gentoo

EDIT: It takes 514 MB, so I'm a little bit closer.

Jaglover · Post by **Jaglover** » Thu May 04, 2006 10:13 pm

Throw disks away and use those computers as diskless terminals?

EmptyDoor · Post by **EmptyDoor** » Thu May 04, 2006 10:22 pm

We would have, but the problem is that we don't have any servers. This is being done by the students' council, and the goal is to have one computer in every classroom. Since we don't have our own server equipment (except for a Pentium Pro server with 96 MB RAM

), we are forced to use the school's Citrix ICA servers, and as far as I know, they don't support diskless nodes. The computers start the Citrix ICA Client from within FluxBox. We are of course trying to convince the school into running LTSP, but the fascists in the county administration don't seem to like the idea of free software.

cyrillic · Post by **cyrillic** » Fri May 05, 2006 5:01 pm

Have you tried building your Gentoo systems with the uclibc profile ?
It should give you a much smaller system footprint.

Stage tarballs can be found here :
http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/x ... ed/stages/

nixnut · Post by **nixnut** » Fri May 05, 2006 5:01 pm

Just use Damn Small Linux instead.