On Wed, May 20, 1998 at 12:32:10AM -0400, Kiyan Azarbar wrote: > I had an idea recently. I would like to install a very minimal Linux/Debian > base on the family 486. I already have a little LAN going here, using the > 192.168.1.X subnet. We have three (sometimes four) computers connected, using > coax/BNC and terminators. Everything is great, I even have samba set up so I > can print, through magicfilter, to the BJC-4000 on my father's win95 machine. cool setup...I was on my way to ahaving a setup like that a while back... sigh...stuff happend tho...will have iut again... > What I was hoping to do was to install a tiny linux distro on, say, 80 megs of > HD space (it only has 400 megs total). I would install just the bare minimum > for net connectivity, rudimentary system administration, and XFree86. I was > wondering if this is possible in 80 megs? This is no authoritative answer but... I have heard a charicter mode system can be setup in 40 MB...and for an "X terminal" setup...you wouldn;'t even need alot of those utils that fit in 40 MB....I doubt X itself would take up a fulle 40 MB (esp since not all of it needs to be installed) > The purpose would be to start X in > broadcast mode (or whatever it's called) so that the machine would basically > become a glorified X terminal to my computer, so that my brothers can log on > Is this possible? If so, what is the bare minimum I need. How do I get > started? Is there a bootdisk package? I can copy any debs I need from my > computer over to the share drive on the win95 machine, but I'm wondering how I > should go about creating a partition for ext2fs, and how to install the > kernel, etc. Should I just compile a tiny minimalist kernel there? Very interesting...personally I was thinking of the exact same thing... I wont be anywhere enar working out the actual details for a number of months now (but I do plan to setup such a system) you have much drive space on your system? you may be able to get away with almost no hard drive space used if you NFS root it... all it should really need is a kernel, the really critical system binaries (say all of the stuff in debian installs "required") then it woul dneed an X server and thats really about it... (you may even wanna look into low bandwidth X...not an issue for a small local home ethernet network but..hey can i thurt?) so in short I would say it can be done...also... to get more info (this is about all the help I can really give now) there is a HOWTO (maybe a mini-HOWTO) on using a real X-Terminal with linux...so...thjat might be a good starting point for getting a ideas > And most importantly, where do I get fips? um...look on debian ftp sites...under tools > Thanks. no prob :) I am planning to do this eventually myself (I was thinking of throwing together a subset "modified" distribution of debian for this "Specialized" task...but given my current experiance that is a while off) -Steve -- ** Stephen Carpenter ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** sjc@delphi.com ** "We do everything by custom, even belive by it; our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never questioned" --Thomas Carlyle
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