installing on EeePC, running out of space...

Mister Auron · 2008-05-23 01:55:35

I recently bought an EeePC 2g surf, and wanted to install arch to replace the slow xandros system. I setup an USB flashdrive to boot the arch installer. I followed the "avoid pitfalls" arch wiki article, and partitioned without swap, and used ext2. I selected base, devel, and support. I finished the install, and rebooted. I then continued to install the eeemodules, xserver, xfce4, etc. I hooked up an Ethernet cable so I could use pacman until I had my wireless setup. I disabled the syslog-ng daemon, and added the daemons that I needed. I got xfce started, and everything seemed fine, until I saw how much disk space was left. After running:

pacman -Scc

I still only had 250mb of free space. Keep in mind that this is with out any applications (other than the ones that come with xfce). Even if I barely had enough room for the applications I wanted to install. I would have no room for cache.

Is it possible to keep a working arch install (xserver, eeemodules, xfce4) under 1gb, so that I can use the rest of the space for applications, and cache?

I was also wondering what app would allow me to configure my wireless connection graphically. I did get my wireless to work, but there was no accompanying software to monitor signal strength.

phrakture · 2008-05-23 02:35:43

Dunno if it's in the wiki or not, but you can tune the ext2 reserved size too - I think it reserves like 5% of the disk by default for "recovery" or something

gradgrind · 2008-05-23 05:59:45

What about a 'live' type system (i.e. using squashfs/aufs)? See larch, faunos, godane's arch-live, or the system used in the new official install cd. That allows quite a lot of system in a small space, and has the advantage that the flash memory is (normally) accessible read-only, thus extending it's life.

droog · 2008-05-23 07:38:17

For your wireless, you should already have the dependencies to install wifi-radar in community, its the only decent lightweight one i know of.

vogt · 2008-05-23 20:43:14

gradgrind wrote:

What about a 'live' type system (i.e. using squashfs/aufs)? See larch, faunos, godane's arch-live, or the system used in the new official install cd. That allows quite a lot of system in a small space, and has the advantage that the flash memory is (normally) accessible read-only, thus extending it's life.

You'll save over half the space; as an example, a 2.2G system compresses to a 735M iso (using gzip compression), using lzma (there are patches), it would probably fit on a cd without risky overburning.

Mister Auron · 2008-05-24 18:15:23

Thanks, I got everything installed, and still have plenty of space.
I still have two issues though.
When I try to connect to a router with wifi-radar I get this error:

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device ath0 ; Invalid argument.

The app says I am connected, but I'm not. There also isn't any tray icons to see signal strength or how much battery power is left.

Mister Auron · 2008-05-25 05:53:05

UPDATE: Alright, I got the wireless working. After trying out a few gui applications, I finally removed them (and any unused deps), and tried some console commands that other Eee users said worked for them. iwconfig was able to setup a connection to my router fairly easy, and it also didn't try to use 802.11b (which is disabled on my router). I'm still looking for something that will keep me up to date on the signal strength, and remaining battery power. I was thinking about installing a few gnome packages to reach this effect, but how do I get them working in xfce?

Berseker · 2008-09-28 08:07:08

have you ever tried wicd?

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-23 01:55:35

installing on EeePC, running out of space...

#2 2008-05-23 02:35:43

Re: installing on EeePC, running out of space...

#3 2008-05-23 05:59:45

Re: installing on EeePC, running out of space...

#4 2008-05-23 07:38:17

Re: installing on EeePC, running out of space...

#5 2008-05-23 20:43:14

Re: installing on EeePC, running out of space...

#6 2008-05-24 18:15:23

Re: installing on EeePC, running out of space...

#7 2008-05-25 05:53:05

Re: installing on EeePC, running out of space...

#8 2008-09-28 08:07:08

Re: installing on EeePC, running out of space...

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