Other Help Topics :: How to make DSL smaller?

OK, I've been trying to do this for quite some time now and I think I know what the problem is.

This part:

Code Sample

chroot /path/to/files/
mount -t proc /proc proc

doesn't work at all

It says:

Code Sample

root@box:/mnt/test/cd# chroot /mnt/test/cd
chroot: /bin/bash: No such file or directory

and that's it. No idea what to do next.

Maybe the proc mounting doesn't work cause of this. No idea.

And finally, MANY of my apt-get purges end with errors of this kind:

Code Sample

Purging configuration files for xfonts-75dpi ...
dpkg: error processing xfonts-75dpi (--purge):
cannot remove old config file `/etc/X11/fonts/75dpi/xfonts-75dpi.alias' (= `/KNOPPIX/etc/X11/fonts/75dpi/xfonts-75dpi.alias'): Read-only file system
Errors were encountered while processing:
xfonts-75dpi

So, as of what I understand the problem is that I try to remove packages from the DSL I'm under and not from the extracted KNOPPIX source hence read-only, hence error.

And all this is probably because of the chroot not working like I'd like it to work, so please help me with that.

Thanks a lot

From your replies it sounds like /mnt/test/cd/proc and /mnt/test/cd/bin/bash don't exist. They certainly should do if the files have been extracted properly. If you're following this tutorial you would extract the files using

mkdir /mnt/test/cd/source
cd /mnt/test/cd
cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/* source
cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/.bash_profile source

This requires you to be booting from a livecd/frugal install (doing it from a hdinstall is a whole different matter). Also you need a decent amount of free space on the device mounted at /mnt/test (probably at least 200MBs). I guess if you've got enough memory you could do the entire remaster in /tmp.

Anyway once you've extracted the files you should be able to chroot into /mnt/test/cd/source.

Well, this /mnt/test is a 400MB .IMG file on my FAT32 drive :P and I'm using LiveCD with toram.
I'll try in a few minutes. I'm having a tiny idea of a possible mistake I've been making :P

However, is the chroot needed to mount proc?
If so, then I hope I'll manage.
If not, then something is still bad

UPDATE: Yeeee, it's working!

Anyhow, what does this 'proc' do? What is it?

This is worth a new post

It's fine now, I was making an idiotic mistake :]
Still, some apps can't be uninstalled, maybe they're in use or something...

Nevertheless, apart from things on that list I'd very much like to remove:

FLwriter
xZGV
siag
Sylpheed
Beaver
axyFTP
...and maybe a few more, but when I know how to remove one [or a few] of theses I think I'll manage

Could you tell me how to do that?
I'd like to remove both the programs and their icons from the standard desktop.

Quote (QmQ @ May 06 2005,12:34)

Anyhow, what does this 'proc' do? What is it?

With what you are doing, you are trying to transfer control from one directory tree to another seamlessly and run linux from that new tree. This will work provided that the new directory tree is fully populated with the bare essentials.

That is not what you want to do.

I think a simple way to reduce the size of DSL is to first run DSL with gnu-utils.dsl and dsl-dpkg.dsl installed, and use the apt-get and dpkg utilities to note down (and not delete yet) all the debian packages installed. Then copy the contents of /KNOPPIX/ directory to some place and start deleting items from that copy based on the notes you made. You delete the items manually. There are some non-Debian things that came with DSL; figure out their dependencies and delete the things you don't need. And finally, follow the latter part of the "big remastering thread" on how to create the new KNOPPIX cloop file (where they start using "mkisofs -R ...") and the new DSL iso.

Hopefully you did not delete too much...

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