--- On Thu, 11/18/10, Steven I Usdansky <usdanskys(a)rocketmail.com> wrote:
> It's not at all clear to me how one would go about
installing f13 or f14
> (or anything else similarly-sized) on a 4 gig device.
You may have better
> luck if you can stick an 8 gig (or bigger) SDHC card
in the SDHC card
> reader, install /boot on the internal 4 gigs and then
let / and /home
> spill over onto it.
>
Been there, done that, here's how (more or less):
1. Install to a spacious partition on a similar system
2. Shrink partition containing the unstall to <4GB using
gparted
3. Archive the filesystem (I use fsarchiver)
4. Format 4GB device (one ext2 partition)
5. Unarchive the archived filesystem to the 4GB device
6. Grow fs on 4GB device to fill the device
6. Install grub on 4GB device
7. Clean up mount point refs as needed
8. Reboot system from 4GB device
In those situations where drive space is tight (and/or RAM limited), I prefer doing a
"base" install or whatever the distro offers as a option to the standard
install. No X. No GUI. Etc. This usually takes the smallest amount of space
possible--most time a few hundred megs--and doesn't require another computer. Then
use the command line package utility to remove what I don't need, and build the system
I do, one piece at a time.
Using the above technique, I've obtained systems with GUI and all the bells and
whistles I want in half the space (or less) of a default install, usually 1.2 to 1.5 GB,
without much effort. Besides the space savings, the systems seem to run faster and
smoother, and use less RAM.
With today's distros being more potpourri than OS with a few basic utilities to get
you started, I'm looking at the above technique for my next "normal" install
just so there's no crab grass to begin with. ;-)
B