How to cram PCLinuxOS-Gnome onto a 4G drive?

[ibexslam]

I've just installed PCLOS-G on a 4 gb flash drive. But, as I've configured things, I'm out of room before I've even begun to do anything. I knew it was going to be tight, but I was hoping I'd have enough wiggle room to get by. When I installed the OS, I used about 1 G for home, .5 G for swap, and the rest (about 2.5 G) for the system.

So, I'm short somewhere. Maybe I can tweak my partitions...or something? I know it's possible to run Linux on a 4 gb flash, because the Asus Eee is doing it. (Somewhat different OS, yes.) Reinstall the OS and then uninstall applications that I don't want...would that work?

I know that my options include using a USB hard drive (bigger) instead of a flash drive, or using a more compact OS such as Damn Small or Puppy. But, before I give up and resort to one of those options, I want to try to see if there's something else I can do.

Tips, pointers, I'm all ears.

I.

[Jonathan183]

Separate partitions for root and home are optional ... you could put everything in a root partition, that way the maximum space is available and you will not run out of space on root but still have space capacity in home.
I don't know what the minimum recommended swap is ... maybe you could trim something there as well. I don't think I have any other sensible suggestions other than be ruthless with apllications installed and also be ruthless with logging - otherwise the system may not work for very long.

[ibexslam]

be ruthless with logging

How would one do that, exactly?

As for the rest, maybe I'll try redoing the install, a little differently as suggested.

I.

[Jonathan183]

How would one do that, exactly?

As for the rest, maybe I'll try redoing the install, a little differently as suggested.

I.

I assume the installation is fairly similar to this and you can chose not to enable logging.

[ibexslam]

That description of the installation is about right, as I recall, but I don't recall anything about disabling logging. There was a checkbox that said "Enable ACPI." I left it checked as it was. Hold on...[googles]...oh, that's power management. Nothing about logging in the help file.

So anyway...I did try reinstalling that thing. This time, instead of "Use existing partitions" or "Custom disk partitioning," I checked "Erase and use entire disk."

Without giving me the opportunity to say anything about partition sizes, the install set me up with a 2.0 GB "Filesystem" (out of the 4 on the flash drive) which was immediately 100% filled. (There's also a separate "1.4 GB USB flash memory.") I logged in as root and uninstalled some programs with synaptic. Somehow, that just seemed to make things worse. So I'm basically confronting the same nonsense as before.

I've seen a number of sites that say PCLOS is a good distro for installing on a flash drive. I don't get that.

I.

[ibexslam]

After a little checking around, I see that PCLinuxOS has around 2 gigs of compressed data and programs on the live CD.

So why doesn't it fit on my 4 GB drive?

I.

[oz]

Would PCLinuxOS MiniMe work for you? Here's a HowTo with additional information on getting it setup.

Edit: nevermind, I just noticed you want Gnome. It might be too lean for your needs, anyway.

[ibexslam]

I've been taking another look at those little distros, but they are really quite tiny. I've got 4 gigs to work with here. Surely there's a way for me to plug in and do my thing with continuity from one session to the next without being overly stingy. And I do prefer the Gnome over the other desktops.

The installer never mentioned anything to me such as "Your device can't accommodate the OS; the minimum is so-and-so." It did its thing and left me with a mess.

I.

[ibexslam]

I tried installing the TinyMe, which is quite nice considering its compact size. The process set me up with some partitions and directories. I asked myself, couldn't I scootch that partition over a little and then do a new install of the PC-Gnome? Just then a crow outside said "Gparted" and I knew I had the answer.

I used the version of Gparted on its own live-CD. I found the interface to be semi-not-intuitive, but it did the job. I decreased the /dev/sda6 (/home) to 1 gb and tweaked the /dev/sda1 (/) up to 2.44 gb. Took the (old) computer several hours to complete.

Did a fresh install of PC-Gnome. (Made necessary changes to "sdb" described earlier.) I was asked to set the mount points, which I only vaguely understand at this point, so I went for / and /home.

I'm currently running as root and that's working quite well, carrying over settings from session to session.

Still a few things not working right:

When I plug a flash drive into another usb port, I get "Cannot mount volume. Invalid mount option when attempting to mount the volume." So, no usb.

Also, I can't log in as ibexslam, only root. The message is that /home/ibexslam doesn't exist. It does, actually, in the 1 gb partition. So, something isn't connecting right in there.

Any tips, o wise ones, on how to get these usb's and user accounts to work?

Fdisk -l results are attached.

I'm all ears!

I.


bash-3.1# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 9957 79979571 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sda: 4126 MB, 4126146560 bytes
127 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7874 * 512 = 4031488 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 651 2562956 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 652 1023 1464564 5 Extended
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(1023, 126, 62) logical=(1022, 126, 62)
/dev/sda5 653 763 437007 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 764 1023 1023589 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 63 MB, 63488000 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 242 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 243 61984 6 FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(240, 15, 32) logical=(242, 2, 32)

[ibexslam]

Aha. I had a feeling that there was another file I needed to tweak. As it turns out, fstab was showing "sdb" instead of the correct "sda". When I fixed that, I was able to log in as a normal user, and an additional usb flash is accessible without a problem.

Persistent PClinuxOS-Gnome on a stick. It works! It's great!

ibexslam