[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Working ia32-linux chroot image



Peter Nelson wrote:
> I've been playing around with the /emul/ia32-linux area a bit lately and 
> I finally got tired of pulling down library packages debs and extracting 
> them into that area manually.

Agreed.  That does sound tedious.  The kind of work that robots will
be doing in the future.  Oh wait!  APT already does that!  :-)

> I first used debootstrap to install a full system into a chroot
> there, but realized that's a heck of a lot wasted space on unneeded
> packages.

I am operating under the assumption that disk space is cheap.  So I
have just been using the full chroot.  But a more efficient area would
be nice.  In fact if there were a way to use debootstrap to build a
minimul sized installation I think that would be really beneficial.

> After a bit of tweaking I've gotten what I think is the smallest
> chroot that will still allow you to use apt-get and dpkg.

You did not say but what was the final amount of disk space that you
were able to reduce your minimum system down to?  My barebones
debootstrap install is around 110MB.  But of course after I install
various libraries and packages such as mozilla-firefox and
openoffice.org the size is much larger.  (I am running the 32-bit web
browsers to allow me to use 32-bit binary plugins.  And similar
reasons for openoffice.org.)

> Since it took me a while to build (debian depends don't work when
> you're removing half the base system)

Does this statement mean that depends is broken in the resulting
image?  Or only that it was difficult to get to the result because of
the dependencies?

> I've decided to share it.  You can download a tar.bz with
> instructions on how to use it from my site here:
> 
> <http://rufus.hackish.org/wiki/I386Chroot>

Thanks for sharing your work.

Bob



Reply to: