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Hi all,
How much disk space and memory should a basic install following the beginners wiki take?
I trashed my old rc.conf installation which used to run sabnzbd, lighttpd and samba mainly which used to take around 40-75Mb of memory
I installed the new systemd Arch and it's taking 120MB RAM - this is with no software running - just the base install.
I installed the same onto a vm and it takes 80Mb RAM - why would it take less?
And how much disk space does installing the base take - I have an install of over 1GB which seems a lot for a cli based headless server not doing much yet!
htop reports systemd-journald as taking up 1.3% of my memory which is larger than any other process - why is this and can it be lowered?
Thanks
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Well, here's how I found the size of the base and base-devel groups in kilobytes (warning: really bad sed):
$ for i in `pacman -Qg base base-devel | sed -e 's/base //g' | sed -e 's/base-devel //g'`; do; pacman -Qi $i | awk '/^Name/ {pkg=$3} /Size/ {print $4$5,pkg}'; done | awk '{print $1}' | sed -e 's/KiB//g' | tr '\n' '+' | sed -e 's/.$/\n/g' | bc
You could find the packages taking the most space by reading this.
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I have no idea what do you mean by 'base install'. On my 32-bit Arch it takes 20 MB RAM right after boot (I mean the buffers/cache line from 'free').
You have to post the output of 'free -m', the list of the software you installed and e.g. some output of ps to see what takes up your RAM.
Last edited by karol (2012-11-14 23:25:29)
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@nagaseiori, you have an exra semi-colon after a "do". It should be
for i in `pacman -Qg base base-devel | sed -e 's/base //g' | sed -e 's/base-devel //g'`; do pacman -Qi $i | awk '/^Name/ {pkg=$3} /Size/ {print $4$5,pkg}'; done | awk '{print $1}' | sed -e 's/KiB//g' | tr '\n' '+' | sed -e 's/.$/\n/g' | bc
@OP, this results in 370,945 KiB according to my system. That is nowhere near a GB (or a GiB for that matter). How are you coming up with these numbers?
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By base install I mean the basic OS installation following the beginners guide in the wiki.
I have gone as far as installing X but no gfx drivers or graphical interface - I stopped after installing mesa in the guide.
On top of this I have installed sabnzbd which is not running and have just installed samba which is running(this hasn't made much difference to mem usage, added around 3mb more).
free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 893320 820276 73044 0 28876 670248
-/+ buffers/cache: 121152 772168
Swap: 265068 0 265068
pstree
systemd─┬─agetty
├─dbus-daemon
├─ifplugd
├─nmbd
├─smbd───2*[smbd]
├─sshd─┬─sshd───sshd───bash
│ └─sshd───sshd───bash───pstree
├─systemd-journal
├─systemd-logind
└─systemd-udevd
df
/dev/sda3 20G 1.4G 17G 8% /
du -skh on root shows most has gone to :-
959M usr (lib/share)
274M var (gone to cache/pacman - which is understandable)
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You may not be running very much, but it really sucks to come here and say, "Why is my sh*t not right when I am running it brand new?" and then a few posts later saying, "Oh yeah, by the way, I installed this, this and this, and I am running them..."
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systemd taking 1.3% of 120MB is really not much...
> 120*.013 -> MB_of_RAM
> MB_of_RAM
[1] 1.56
Arch Linux is not meant to be a super light distro. It is meant to be a bleeding edge Linux distro for bleeding edge hardware.
You should look into Dam Small Linux. That will run with only 16MB of RAM
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
You could also build a system with Linux From Scratch. Then you can do away with BASH and use busybox only, like really build an embedded Linux distro.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Or start with..
http://elinux.org/Main_Page
If you want to lighten up Arch...
First clear your package cache
rm /var/cache/pacman/pkg/*
To save more disk sapce, you should look into makeing a Squashfs of... well basicaly everything except /home
As for RAM, you need to use ps to find which programs are using the most memory and looking for alternatives.
Last edited by hunterthomson (2012-11-15 05:55:27)
OpenBSD-current Thinkpad X230, i7-3520M, 16GB CL9 Kingston, Samsung 830 256GB
Contributor: linux-grsec
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The size can be adjusted. It takes up very little space (compressed, so I'm thinking Btrfs here).
# pacman -Syw base --cachedir ~/
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core is up to date
extra is up to date
community is up to date
:: There are 53 members in group base:
:: Repository core
1) bash 2) bzip2 3) coreutils 4) cronie 5) cryptsetup 6) device-mapper 7) dhcpcd 8) diffutils 9) e2fsprogs 10) file 11) filesystem 12) findutils 13) gawk 14) gcc-libs 15) gettext 16) glibc 17) grep 18) gzip 19) heirloom-mailx 20) inetutils 21) iproute2 22) iputils 23) jfsutils 24) less
25) licenses 26) linux 27) logrotate 28) lvm2 29) man-db 30) man-pages 31) mdadm 32) nano 33) netcfg 34) nss-myhostname 35) pacman 36) pciutils 37) pcmciautils 38) perl 39) ppp 40) procps-ng 41) psmisc 42) reiserfsprogs 43) sed 44) shadow 45) sysfsutils 46) systemd-sysvcompat 47) tar
48) texinfo 49) usbutils 50) util-linux 51) vi 52) which 53) xfsprogs
Enter a selection (default=all):
resolving dependencies...
Targets (53): bash-4.2.039-1 bzip2-1.0.6-4 coreutils-8.20-1 cronie-1.4.8-3 cryptsetup-1.5.1-1 device-mapper-2.02.98-1 dhcpcd-5.6.2-1 diffutils-3.2-1 e2fsprogs-1.42.6-1 file-5.11-1 filesystem-2012.10-2 findutils-4.4.2-4 gawk-4.0.1-1 gcc-libs-4.7.2-2 gettext-0.18.1.1-4 glibc-2.16.0-5 grep-2.14-1
gzip-1.5-1 heirloom-mailx-12.5-3 inetutils-1.9.1-4 iproute2-3.6.0-2 iputils-20121106-1 jfsutils-1.1.15-3 less-451-1 licenses-2.9-1 linux-3.6.6-1 logrotate-3.8.2-1 lvm2-2.02.98-1 man-db-2.6.3-1 man-pages-3.44-1 mdadm-3.2.6-1 nano-2.2.6-2 netcfg-3.0-1 nss-myhostname-0.3-3 pacman-4.0.3-3
pciutils-3.1.10-1 pcmciautils-018-4 perl-5.16.2-1 ppp-2.4.5-5 procps-ng-3.3.5-1 psmisc-22.19-1 reiserfsprogs-3.6.21-4 sed-4.2.1-4 shadow-4.1.5.1-1 sysfsutils-2.1.0-8 systemd-sysvcompat-195-2 tar-1.26-2 texinfo-4.13a-7 usbutils-006-1 util-linux-2.22.1-2 vi-1:050325-2 which-2.20-5
xfsprogs-3.1.8-2
Total Download Size: 85.41 MiB
Proceed with download? [Y/n]
If you want base-devel too... the total would be around 150 MB.
Of course, you can trim it down a few, by leaving out: jfsutils, reiserfsprogs, xfsprogs, lvm2, mdadm, cryptsetup, vi, systemd-sysvcompat, etc.
And about the RAM thing, see: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FA … _my_RAM.3F
In VirtualBox, an Arch Linux VM is set to use 256 MB RAM by default. If you compare that to the full amount of RAM on the computer (a "bare-bones" install), the size is automatically adjusted. The same thing happens on Windows, too. The amount in MB is adjusted according to the available memory. For example, Firefox is not going to take up the same amount on a machine with 512 MB RAM, compared to one with 4 GB RAM; even with the same settings. It's just how the kernel operates.
I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).
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Ah ok thanks - that link about the RAM explains it a bit better - is this how it's always been? - my previous pre-systemd install had a lot more running but took around half the RAM.
I left my VM running for the past day and with 512MB RAM it is using 34MB so it appears it lowers overs time.
@WonderWoofy - I am not complaining about anything , I am more curious than anything else and was wanting to fix any underlying issue if it exists before layering on the other parts of my system. I am comparing with my previous set-up which was perfect for me in terms of resources used and speed.
I know Arch isn't a super light distro but one of it's goals is/was to be minimalist - I guess this means something else nowadays as capacities increase all round.
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120MB seems like a lot to me (the live CD takes 54MB after booting). Can you give more details? top shows you which program uses how much, and /proc/meminfo gives more information.
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/tmp is now stored in RAM, so you might want to disable this to release more RAM space.
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In VirtualBox, an Arch Linux VM is set to use 256 MB RAM by default. If you compare that to the full amount of RAM on the computer (a "bare-bones" install), the size is automatically adjusted. The same thing happens on Windows, too. The amount in MB is adjusted according to the available memory. For example, Firefox is not going to take up the same amount on a machine with 512 MB RAM, compared to one with 4 GB RAM; even with the same settings. It's just how the kernel operates.
Interesting. I always thought this happened, but was only estimating on that. Thanks for the info
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Only partially relevant, but that long multi-sed line can be replaced with the following:
pacman -Si $(pacman -Sgq base base-devel) | awk '/Installed Size/ {sum+=$4;} END {print sum/1024 " MiB"}'
Edit: aren't code tags supposed to prevent line wrapping (it isn't here)? Is this new in the fluxBB software?
Last edited by Trilby (2012-11-17 14:13:10)
"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" - Richard Stallman
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Edit: aren't code tags supposed to prevent line wrapping (it isn't here)? Is this new in the fluxBB software?
They do here.
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