On Sun, 2004-05-23 at 21:43 +0200, MG wrote: > Hi! > > When will be avaiable in Fedora the absolute minimal install option? > It could be the 300-400MB with the absolute necessery packages? > For exmaple for a single firewall system. > > Bye! > Gabor > I've managed some minimal installs of Fedora by using some of the tips that have appeared on the list in the past. What I do is to boot into rescue mode from the CD. I use fdisk to create my partitions, format, etc then mount my filesystems under /mnt/sysimage directory. I then do an 'rpm --initdb --root /mnt/sysimage' which creates the rpmdb under /mnt/sysimage/var/lib/rpm. I then do an 'rpm -ivh --root /mnt/sysimage kernel-xxxxx.rpm' or other known-needed package and keep adding the requirements until all are satisfied. Once glibc, rpm, bash and their myriad of dependinces are installed, you can 'chroot /mnt/sysimage' so you are in your new install (kinda feeling like Gentoo at this point ;) ) and continue adding your desired packages. Things to remember: If you want to keep with Fedora/RH tradition, label your filesystems and copy an /etc/fstab from a different system for a base. Tweak it as necessary to match your partitioning. Install grub or lilo if you want to boot! Run through their respective install routines so that you can boot. There will be some package dependencies that don't make sense or you don't feel are really needed. If you want to maintain your sanity, just go with the flow. Fedora is not intended to be an embedded distro fitting in as little space as possible. If that is your real desire, find a distro with that intent. Don't try to use a belt sander when you need to change a light bulb. I would recommend trying to get yum or apt installed. This will mean additional reqs that you may not want such as python, but since you may have next to nothing installed, it's so much nicer just saying 'yum install blahblah' and letting it work things out instead of going through all of the dependency fun all over again. Of course, the yum headers will add to your storage reqs. With this method, I've managed working installs around 200mb with additional utils installed that I needed/wanted. Pretty spartan to be sure (no man pages, etc) but it did work rather well. Also helps you to appreciate what Anaconda does for you! -- David T Hollis <dhollis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
