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#1 2010-01-06 03:12:58

maccabee
Member
Registered: 2010-01-06
Posts: 5

Arch / minimum.

I'm installing Arch on an old IBM Thinkpad 600E, and the thing only has a 10GB HDD, and arch is telling me that 7500kb is recommended just for / which would leave me with only a little more than a gb for /home. So I wanted to know what the minimum amount I could use for / is.

I will only be installing xorg, openbox, firefox, and other light applications.

Excuse my bad forum manners. I usually try not to make a thread with no posts but google was of no help and I needed an answer as soon as possible.

*tips hat*

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#2 2010-01-06 03:19:44

Misfit138
Misfit Emeritus
From: USA
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 4,189

Re: Arch / minimum.

It's always a possibility to use the whole drive for / (plus a swap perhaps) and forgo a /home partition if your drive is that small.

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#3 2010-01-06 03:26:13

maccabee
Member
Registered: 2010-01-06
Posts: 5

Re: Arch / minimum.

O, so you mean I can just put all my files in /? If that's the case I might as well just make / 9234kb and make /home 0kb, right? And the 9234kb is the max aloud, and that is after the swap and boot.

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#4 2010-01-06 03:29:48

NeOnsKuLL
Member
From: Havana, Cuba
Registered: 2005-03-29
Posts: 117

Re: Arch / minimum.

With no fear, you can make / between 3 and 4 gb, a swap 1.5 or 2 times your RAM, and the left hard disk to /home

That's what I recommend to you.

See you


Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz | 2x1GB 667MHz | 250+750GB Seageate SATAII | Samsung 19" TFT 1440x900
Openbox + obmenugen + PyTyle | bmpanel2 | oblogout | conky | pyBgSetter (with Esetroot as backend)
Projects: obmenugen, pyBgSetter

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#5 2010-01-06 03:33:48

sHyLoCk
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2009-06-19
Posts: 1,197

Re: Arch / minimum.

maccabee wrote:

O, so you mean I can just put all my files in /? If that's the case I might as well just make / 9234kb and make /home 0kb, right? And the 9234kb is the max aloud, and that is after the swap and boot.

No he meant you don't need to create and assign any other partitions besides / [root] and swap[if needed].

Last edited by sHyLoCk (2010-01-06 03:34:25)


~ Regards,
sHy
ArchBang: Yet another Distro for Allan to break.
Blog | GIT | Forum (。◕‿◕。)

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#6 2010-01-06 03:35:35

maccabee
Member
Registered: 2010-01-06
Posts: 5

Re: Arch / minimum.

But doing that would entail giving / all the space, correct, and then when it asks me how much space I want for /home I would just press cancel. Correct?

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#7 2010-01-06 03:37:37

sHyLoCk
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2009-06-19
Posts: 1,197

Re: Arch / minimum.

maccabee wrote:

But doing that would entail giving / all the space, correct, and then when it asks me how much space I want for /home I would just press cancel. Correct?

Yup just skip it. I dn't think Arch installer asks you to mount a partition as /home though, only gives you a warning if you didn't create a separate /boot. Which can also be skipped. ;-)


~ Regards,
sHy
ArchBang: Yet another Distro for Allan to break.
Blog | GIT | Forum (。◕‿◕。)

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#8 2010-01-06 03:37:39

Misfit138
Misfit Emeritus
From: USA
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 4,189

Re: Arch / minimum.

maccabee wrote:

O, so you mean I can just put all my files in /? If that's the case I might as well just make / 9234kb and make /home 0kb, right? And the 9234kb is the max aloud, and that is after the swap and boot.

In this case, I would recommend using 1 partition for swap, 2x the size of your RAM, and the rest of the drive as /
With a small HDD like that, it can be easy to fill up /, especially if you are new to Arch and will be experimenting with different software, etc.

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#9 2010-01-06 03:41:50

maccabee
Member
Registered: 2010-01-06
Posts: 5

Re: Arch / minimum.

I'm new to arch, but I'm currently typing this on a machine, that I installed command line debian and openbox on, which is practically the same as arch. So, If I did still want to give /home a seperate partition, what would be the minimum for root with just xorg, firefox, thunar, tint2, obmenu, obconf, xcompmgr, hsetroot, lxappearance and leafpad? That is all I will be installing. But of course I'd like to have a little extra room.

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#10 2010-01-06 04:21:36

maccabee
Member
Registered: 2010-01-06
Posts: 5

Re: Arch / minimum.

I gave everything to / but then I got an error saying something went wrong when partitioning. So I'm gonna install for a 3rd time, but give / 2gbs.

Last edited by maccabee (2010-01-06 04:25:27)

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#11 2010-01-06 04:28:07

rttommy
Member
Registered: 2007-12-27
Posts: 19

Re: Arch / minimum.

This tutorial should help you save a lot of space: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Max … ing_.2Fusr. My install with openoffice/firefox/openbox is taking about 1gb.

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#12 2010-01-08 02:33:00

yvonney
Member
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 671

Re: Arch / minimum.

I think you'll perhaps need to redo the entire beginning install process and that may be why the partitioning error occurs. Sorry I can't recall exactly what my multiple-experience was with that.
I always run everything in one / partition and no swap, just a swap file created later sometimes.
I do have lots of weirdness with old laptops generally however. Often they actually end up kinda broken and over heat etc.
Yet, with a working one I've fond many acpi and related strings to add to grub when booting. Again, all very fuzzy in my memory though clear enough when i'm up against a problem hencemention here.

Last edited by yvonney (2010-01-08 02:35:08)

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#13 2010-01-08 06:33:05

hatten
Arch Linux f@h Team Member
From: Sweden, Borlange
Registered: 2009-02-23
Posts: 736

Re: Arch / minimum.

I hope you're following the beginners guide on the wiki when you're installing. I still use parts of it, even after almost a year of using Arch.

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#14 2010-01-08 10:51:08

Mr.Elendig
#archlinux@freenode channel op
From: The intertubes
Registered: 2004-11-07
Posts: 4,092

Re: Arch / minimum.

s/kb/MiB/g


Evil #archlinux@libera.chat channel op and general support dude.
. files on github, Screenshots, Random pics and the rest

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#15 2010-01-08 12:38:23

SoleSoul
Member
From: Israel
Registered: 2009-06-29
Posts: 319

Re: Arch / minimum.

@maccabee, I think you misunderstood something.
When you assign everything to /, since /home is under / and you didn't give it another partition explicitly, you still put your files under /home, but they will be on the same partition as /.

Think of /home as a regular folder (that's what it is). Just in case you assign another partition to it, it becomes something like another drive mounted there instead of a regular folder.


@all the other
Why would he need 2xhis ram swap space? I don't assign more than 512 MB and Arch *never* uses it.

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#16 2010-01-08 12:46:17

barzam
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2009-01-27
Posts: 277

Re: Arch / minimum.

I have an old Thinkpad like that with 128 Mb RAM. Your machine probably has way more, that's why it doesn't swap.

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#17 2010-01-08 14:20:53

Misfit138
Misfit Emeritus
From: USA
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 4,189

Re: Arch / minimum.

SoleSoul wrote:

r.


@all the other
Why would he need 2xhis ram swap space? I don't assign more than 512 MB and Arch *never* uses it.

Your kernel isn't using it because 512MB is plenty of RAM for most tasks, and your computing habits do not require it. If you had 192MB or less, you would probably notice swap space being used.

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#18 2010-01-08 20:39:36

littlebear
Member
Registered: 2010-01-08
Posts: 3
Website

Re: Arch / minimum.

Though doesn't openbox with most daily operating software uses about 150~500 Mb of RAM? my suggestion is to put 80% of the Harddisk to / and then match your physical ram to /swap and then finally leave the rest for /home
If you have a removeable flashdisk that you use daily then set /home to 30 kb and set a softlink to your flashdisk like this
"ln -s /home/a /media/devicename"
where the /media/devicename is already configured in /etc/fstab

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