Installing on drives <4GB
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yldouright
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2011 1:41 am
Installing on drives <4GB
I recently ran into a problem trying to install LXDE on a 2.4GB drive from the Debian Squeeze net install distro. The thing ran out of space just before 70% completion when trying to use the "advanced" install option of LXDE so naturally, I thought I would install the base system first and use apt-get to install after rebooting. Well, not so easy. I thought that a detailed explanation of the problems encountered might help someone with small drive issues. First problem encountered is a rights issue. How do you get the rights for aptitude to install the environment with all the dependencies and options intact?
Re: Installing on drives <4GB
Am curious, what issues are you seeing when you try to install LXDE? I installed using the Debian network install CD (netinst) and didn't run into any major problems with the basics. I do have more drive space than you though. You can also look at using the Antix core CD. I don't have a working Internet connection on the machine yet, so I installed anything I wanted that wasn't in the most basic CD install using sneakernet. Technique described here: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/howto/s ... ng_statler
I'm not running a full LXDE installation, but I have Openbox, lxtask and other choice utilities and programs from LXDE installed.
I logged in as root when I did my initial system set up and installed packages I wanted on my system, so I didn't notice a permissions issue. I used dpkg (installed from the CD) to install files individually until I got dpkg-dev installed. Once that's done, tools like aptitude or dselect worked for me using the sneakernet technique. From there, I installed X, Openbox and synaptic. Once synaptic was up, I installed the parts of LXDE that I wanted. After switching to running as a regular user, as long as it could find my files for starting X with Openbox (such as .xinitrc) in the logged in user's home directory, everything ran fine. Only permission issues I hit were setting up sudo (needed to edit /etc/sudoers file with visudo command) and needing to add the user to tty group for urxvt to run. lxterminal worked fine. There's a program called ktsuss that gives the ability to run su graphically in X Windows without needing to pull in desktop libraries from Gnome or KDE like gksu and kdesudo do. There are also some examples at the yad wiki ( http://code.google.com/p/yad/wiki/Examples ) for running commands with sudo in a graphical environment.
I'm not running a full LXDE installation, but I have Openbox, lxtask and other choice utilities and programs from LXDE installed.
I logged in as root when I did my initial system set up and installed packages I wanted on my system, so I didn't notice a permissions issue. I used dpkg (installed from the CD) to install files individually until I got dpkg-dev installed. Once that's done, tools like aptitude or dselect worked for me using the sneakernet technique. From there, I installed X, Openbox and synaptic. Once synaptic was up, I installed the parts of LXDE that I wanted. After switching to running as a regular user, as long as it could find my files for starting X with Openbox (such as .xinitrc) in the logged in user's home directory, everything ran fine. Only permission issues I hit were setting up sudo (needed to edit /etc/sudoers file with visudo command) and needing to add the user to tty group for urxvt to run. lxterminal worked fine. There's a program called ktsuss that gives the ability to run su graphically in X Windows without needing to pull in desktop libraries from Gnome or KDE like gksu and kdesudo do. There are also some examples at the yad wiki ( http://code.google.com/p/yad/wiki/Examples ) for running commands with sudo in a graphical environment.
Re: Installing on drives <4GB
Well, 2.4 GB is a bit restricted.
Maybe it could be done, most probably not by choosing to install the desktop environment directly.
You would choose to install only the 'standard packages'. You would then reboot to a command-line system.
You could then install alsa-base, alsa-utils, xserver-xorg-core, xserver-input-evdev (for mouse and keyboard) and xserver-xorg-video-*** (this last you should choose the one proper for your video card).
You should do that with 'apt-get install --no-install-recommends <package>' so it won't install uneeded extra packages that only take HD space. After every installation of packages you should run 'apt-get autoclean' to save more space.
At last you could install LXDE with 'apt-get install --no-install-recommends lxde'.
Maybe it could be done, most probably not by choosing to install the desktop environment directly.
You would choose to install only the 'standard packages'. You would then reboot to a command-line system.
You could then install alsa-base, alsa-utils, xserver-xorg-core, xserver-input-evdev (for mouse and keyboard) and xserver-xorg-video-*** (this last you should choose the one proper for your video card).
You should do that with 'apt-get install --no-install-recommends <package>' so it won't install uneeded extra packages that only take HD space. After every installation of packages you should run 'apt-get autoclean' to save more space.
At last you could install LXDE with 'apt-get install --no-install-recommends lxde'.
Re: Installing on drives <4GB
Found out the hard way on Debian, if you install Alsa without installing udev first, Alsa may not properly install. There's some code in the Alsa installation that looks to see if you have udev installed and if not, doesn't set up certain things for audio card devices. If you're going to run Alsa using udev to find your audio devices, you really need to install udev first. If you don't, you can reinstall Alsa after udev is installed or borrow some of the code for setting up audio devices for udev from the Linux from Scratch site. I did quite a bit of checking on the web when I set up my audio card, because it wasn't working properly out of the box. The older methods of setting up audio devices (such as those using modules.conf) appear to be deprecated with Debian. I also read through the Alsa installation code in the Debian packages to see exactly what was going on and the current way Debian was expecting to deal with audio devices. It appears to use udev exclusively for making sure audio devices are set up and available during the initialization process. The alsaconf utility isn't in the Debian Alsa packages and also appears to be deprecated with Debian. The alsactl utility is used to store and restore the volume levels once udev sets up the audio devices so they're accessible as /dev/ devices.
Re: Installing on drives <4GB
I'm sorry guys but I have no idea what are you talking about 
As of now, I never had to go that deep. I think the OP has that problem because he/she is using a very old machine. My first PC ever was with 2.1GB HDD and it was more than half full. At that time, it was Windows 98. That was 1999.
I wish I could understand what is going on over this thread but I'm sure one day I'll have to deal with all that so I'll take it easy
As of now, I never had to go that deep. I think the OP has that problem because he/she is using a very old machine. My first PC ever was with 2.1GB HDD and it was more than half full. At that time, it was Windows 98. That was 1999.
I wish I could understand what is going on over this thread but I'm sure one day I'll have to deal with all that so I'll take it easy
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