> On Sun, 7 Feb 1999, Jeff Knox wrote:
>
> > Hey,
> >
> > I have been contemplating making a custom linux install of my
> > machine for a long time. I find that all linux distrobutions come with
> > too much crap that waste hd space, and I like to know exactly what is on
> > my machine. So may question is What does the Linux kernel require to
> > boot? Are does a very basic base distrobution need? What should I
> > include to start with? I figure I will look at some of the floppy linux
> > distros and see what they use for a start. Any help would be
> > appreciated, thanks.
[snip]
> What I'd like to see is a bootable Linux CDROM, so that in a PC that can
> boot from CDROM, it's just a matter of popping in the CDROM, pressing the
> reset button, and waiting for the X11 greeting. For this, the startup
> scripts should be able to automagically detect a range of graphics,
> and setup X11 for that card, because we don't want to be stuck with 16 bit
> color at 640x480 or something like that. Same for mice, modems, ISDN
> cards, etc, adjusting the gpm and pppd/ipppd settings.
<sound of dropping jaw>
Setup WHAT? IMHO X goes neatly under the 'space-taking crap' cathegory.
It's definitely *not* needed for basic install. What next? KDE/Gnome?
Netrape? Frankly, all I *really* use X for is testing VM under stress.
That and XDvi.
D'oh. More or less reasonable thing to start from may be looking through
the list of Debian packages, grepping for Priority: required (and
especiall for ones with Essential: yes) and then for Priority: important
stuff. The most serious deviation from bare minimum being that many
scripts use Perl (and the whole package system - dpkg, dinstall and
friends). At least dependencies are clearly stated and that can be used to
exclude unnecessary things. Then look what do those packages install. Or
do the same with Slackware. For absolute minimum you may take kernel +
shell + ld.so + needed libraries (or make the shell static) and boot with
init=/bin/sh. For minimal system you will want init/getty/login + normal
utilities (cp/mv/rm/dd/cat/sort/grep/sed/awk/uniq/join/cut/chmod/chown/ls/
df/kill/mkdir/mknod/rmdir/mount/umount/kill/sleep/su/ed/fsck/mkfs/find/ps -
see man[18] from v7 for more or less standard list), most likely some
editor beyond ed (nvi is fine), at and cron, make, gcc and binutils if you
want to compile anything, gzip and tar for dealing with archives (actually
in standard set, except that gzip supercedes compress). man and manpages,
indeed, thus groff to format said manpages. Considering the strange GNU
attitude towards manpages you may have to install info. To compile GNU
packages you may need autoconf perversion (if you don't want to edit large
chunks of Makefiles). That's more or less enough to work comfortably on a
stand-alone box with no access to net. If you want to use net - take
ifconfig/route/bind/ping/traceroute and add ftp, telnet and lynx. For
email stuff - mailx and {sendmail|qmail|whatever MTA you fancy}. You may
need inetd at this point.
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