Debian :: Debian Live - How To Make A Small Distribution
Jul 31, 2009
I have a mini-ITX based system with a 256Mb Flash Drive and 256Mb of RAM.
I aim to use it for the following applications:
Samba Server
Cups
Rsync
Basic Web Server
File based Wiki (perhaps Dokuwiki)
Package Management (to easily add other software as required)
I don't need any X based software or Desktop.
I was hoping to create a Debian Live distribution and run the whole operating system either from a Read Only file system or from RAM.
However (after connecting a standard HDD) and installing basic Debian along with the packages I require (and their dependencies) the filesystem is already over 1Gb in size.
Is there any way this can be reduced drastically in size? Is Debian Live the best way of achieving what I want? Something like Puppy Linux is much smaller in size but I don't want something with such an emphasis on having a Desktop environment which I don't need.
I know of 3 at least so far Sidux and GRML and DRBL are there any others that are based on stabel or sid? or what? frugal as in like puppy, tinycore, dsl, etc nomadic like, usb, hd, etc?
If I use Ubuntu's (10.4) Startup Disc Creator app to create Debian (Lenny) start up USB I just get (when using it on a separate machine) a black screen with the text "boot:" If I press Enter I get a pale blue screen but nothing else, some text if I press the TAB key, but it will do nothing. Is this because I use Ubuntu for a Debian OS or is there some other problem? I've noticed that the disc creator in Ubuntu only really likes Ubuntu related OSs. But since it recognised it when I created it I would have thought it'd work!
I have installed "Damn Small Linux" on my home computer for doing C development in unix. But the distribution doesn't by default come with the C development environment and I am facing some issues when trying to install the gcc.Is there any other small Linux distribution which by default has the required packages for the C development. And also I don't want additional software which takes up lot of space but still would like to have the graphical environment.
Is there any easy way (i.e. command or file to view) to find out what distribution I am running? I know that my /etc/apt/sources.list has entries for stable, testing and unstable but I hear that (as of the 30th) "stable" has become Sarge. So if I performed an apt-get update then an apt-get dist-upgrade yesterday should I assume that I am now running Sarge?
I have created some little .deb packages which are running fine within my local box. Now I like to create a personal repo for testing branch to distribute those .deb. I have a hosting space based on cetos server where I have both ftp as well as ssh access and I can create a subdomain there pointing to a folder which I can define. So based on this scenario what might be the best way for me to create a debian signed repo ? I have found - dpkg-scanpackages - reprepro Which can create such repo for testing branch; as main non-free contrib style.
When I signed up for my Debian Linux VPS hosting and first logged on and invoked ps, there was the only user process running: sshd. As I can see, this was minimal Linux with only two things installed and configured: sshd and apt (plus all dependencies, of course).
I want to build (or use existing) similar Linux distro, any advice on how to build (or pick) one? Googling "minimum linux", or "linux with sshd only" usually brings up Debian's netinstall, which is not what I want.
Can squid do 'fair bandwidth sharing' ? What i mean is, if there is 1 user online on a 4mg line, that user will be using the entire 4mg line speed, and if there are 2 users online, each user will have 2mg line speed, and so on. I have squid cache set up already, but i just need to know how bandwidth distribution/sharing can be handled Can squid also be used to limit/disconnect users after they have used up their allotted bandwidth? [I have a mikrotik router connected to the adsl (for wireless users)]
I've figured out that '~i !~M' will give me all packages I have manually installed. Can I formulate a query such that I get all packages manually installed from a particular distribution (e.g. Lenny, Squeeze, Sid)? Yes, I'm using pinning.
I am thinking about creating a Debian Live CD with only the base system. I would like to know how to make the CD bootable so that it can load the kernel and continue with the booting sequence.
I'm running debian live off the cd to see if it fits my requirements. One of my pet peeves about ubuntu is the use of ctrl ctrl is hosed. the os does not seem to use it for anything, but no application can use it. This is the default for google desktop search, which is highly convenient. Seriously considering the move.I ran debian live and went to install the app. Message comes up archive type not recognised.
Does anyone here have experience with using the Debian Live Builder from HERE? Every time I attempt a build, it fails. I thought it strange that it didn't let me select 'amd64' under 'LB_ARCHITECTURE', 'testing' under 'LB_DISTRIBUTION', or multiple options under 'LB_LINUX_FLAVOURS'. Does anyone see what I might have done wrong?
After reinstalling Squeeze's base system, the console font is too small to read comfortably. I tried to pass the kernel parameter vga=0x303 without success. After init starts the font reverts to a very small font that I cannot read comfortably on my 17 inch TFT LCD monitor.
I have recently dropped to a command line to run a DB server. In attempting to write a bit of Python to do this process I went to install emacs using apt-get and noticed that the foot print of the install was going to be around 130 Mb. Likewise with a couple other programs the install size was going to be a lot larger than I anticipated. I was wondering how the footprint could be so large and is there a way to install software without this blow out. While I am happy to use vi or import the code from a desktop with a GUI I think this would be interesting to know.
Every where I look online, people are posting ridiculous non-working ways to upgrade their system from one release to another--they do not work for me and I need a definite expert reply. I am working with a fresh install of Debian Lenny/Stable and wish to upgrade to the frozen Squeeze distribution. Supplementing the word "squeeze" in place of "lenny" in my sources.list file does not work and believe this to be an inappropriate way of upgrading. I have tried upgrading apt, dpkg, and aptitude before beginning the upgrade process, cleaning dpkg cache, rebooting, etc.
After updating the above packages I tried all methods of upgrading: safe-upgrade, full-upgrade, and dist-upgrade. All produce dependency problems and try to remove the gnome-desktop package or upgrade everything else except gnome-desktop. (Other packages are also affected, gnome-desktop is the most important in this instance). As I understand it, when upgrading you can comment out the volatile repositories as well as the security updates, is this correct?--either way I have tried countless combination's off commenting/uncommenting to try to get the needed results. I do not want use sid repos or reinstall.
Is there a tool or tutorial to build a distro based on mint/ubuntu/debian?Git, scripts, and tools, small compilations for branding are OK. Compiling kernel, x11, gnome, compiz, etc. is BAD unless really required. Specifically, I'm looking for a way to have some applications installed by default, change logos/about boxes, change theme, configure what compiz options are, and add firmware drivers (connect to the Internet to download wireless adapter driver? <- headache, gotta find a lan cable now ...), and still have the liveCD install method. I'd like it to be based on linux mint, but I only want a few tools from it (update manager, software manager, flash, media codecs), so it's ok if it's ubuntu/debian with those mint tools added back in.
I saw some options, too complex, and others too simple. Not looking for a "learning experience" like LFS which gives me a horrible linux build if I don't do something exactly right. Nor any of those tools which are just package pickers and don't do enough. suse studio looked about right(maybe tad too easy), but was RPM based, not deb based.
I can't seem to find this anywhere. I have burned Debian 5.06 for i386 and trying to login when running the live cd. What is the username and password to get in?
edit.... I found 'user' and 'live' but they don't work.
Today I've setup Debian Squeeze for netbooting with tftp-hpa and isc-dhcp-server. I have also downloaded-only all gnome packages (apt-get install -d gnome) and setup a small apt repository for base system and gnome on the same pc (server).However, my small apt repository is missing debian installer components like libc-udeb, dmsetup-udeb, ppp-modules-udeb, etc. The question is: Where to obtain those packages and their dependencies? I cannot find or download them with apt-get nor aptitude.
The "System Settings/Startup Programs" window is large enough but the "Program" column is too narrow and it cannot be resized. The window can be dragged to make it larger but not the individual columns. It looks like a Java listbox with "Enabled = false" set. This occurs in Debian8 64 bit and also in Mint 17 and Mint LMDE2. I am surprised nobody else has raised the issue. I have a basic setup with 22" screen and 1680 x 1050 resolution. It occurs with Nouveau and NVidia drivers. It is not a critical bug so I have coped with it for 2 years but it would be nice to see it fixed. Unfortunately I could not upload a screen shot as "board attachment quota has been reached".
I'm trying to set up a small web server with php and sqlite support. I installed lighttpd, php5, php-sqlite3 and php5-sqlite3. Then, I enabled sqlite and pdo extensions in php.ini: extension=pdo.so extension=sqlite.so extension=pdo_sqlite.so
However, when I try to open a SQLite3 database from php: $database = new SQLiteDatabase($myDB, 666, $error); I get the following exception: SQLiteDatabase::__construct() [sqlitedatabase.--construct]: file is encrypted or is not a database
Some readings in the net make me think that my php settings are not compatible with SQLite3 databases. Is anyone successfully working with SQLite3 databases from PHP5 under Debian? Have you any recommendations? Should I rebuild php maybe?
After a install on a old Toshiba today everything looked fine. But when i tried to start Xorg it start but doesn't use my whole screen. It is not a resolution problem it just doesn't use the whole screen. Hopefully this explanation is understandable. On lenny i had the same issue but once i changed the console resolution size in grub everything was fine. Sadly this is not the case with squeeze. I already tried "X -configure" and had a look at the generated xorg.conf (posted below)
[code]....
After that is tried to run the generated xorg.conf but then it just frooze.
The GRUB2 menu loads up fine, and I am logged into Gnome okay right now, but in between Grub & Gnome, I see no log messages during startup. So far, it's just an annoyance, but one of these days an automatic fsck is going to find something, and I won't be able to see it. I have a custom kernel, with fglrx compiled into it, in case that matters. This system has never used radeon drivers, so I can't add any information about how this worked before fglrx; it just didn't work without it. I saw startup messages IIRC with kernel 2.6.32 / Debian 5.0, but I couldn't tell which of the many changes led to this little malfunction. Now using Debian 6.0 / kernel 3.0.0.
Hopefully, this is just a minor glitch in Grub2 or some other .conf file, maybe in /etc/X11.
I know that boot partition is possible to create within debian distribution that has grub 2.0, as I have done before with ubuntu. I have been trying many different options with my preseed file but it keeps taking the boot partition out of LVM and creating and extended partition too and then creates the LVM primary partition.
### Partitioning. # you can specify a disk to partition. The device name can be given in either # devfs or traditional non-devfs format. For example, to use the first disk
