Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Boiling Down Slackware Linux to the Essentials?

Posted by Cliff on from the lean-mean-Linux-machine dept.

noxious420 asks: "I need to crank out a large number of very basic Slackware based Linux boxes. I am familiar with the "canned" distribution sets that FreeBSD uses and I want to use a set similar to the "Minimal" - "The smallest configuration possible" set. In Slackware's Expert install mode, I have been able to boil it down to the very bare essentials that it needs to run, but there are some unused and leftover directories that I had to manually delete. I don't want to clean up these directories every time. Is there some way to get a true "minimal" Slackware install? "

2 of 9 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm... by dlc · · Score: 3

    I've been thinking about doing something similar for a while: create a "standard" personal distribution that can just be dropped into place on a new machine. It seems like the best plan would be to install a new machine exactly how you want it, and, on a spare partition, create one bigass tarball. Copy this tarball to a CD. Create a boot disk, minimal kernel with CD support. Boot off the boot disk, create the new partitions, and then untar the image from the CD. Is this an oversimplification? Maybe, but maybe not. There's really no reason why Linux has to be more difficult than this. Of course, this assumes that the machines have similar hardware, which is often the case when you get machines in batches. darren
    Cthulhu for President!

    --
    (darren)
  2. Re:images by RGRistroph · · Score: 3

    Rather than making a disk image, I think you can use the command dump ( see "man dump" ) to put a giant file on a cd which you will restore to the disk with the dump command.

    To get a target machine to the point where you can mount a CD and run dump, I suggest checking out some of the linux floppy distributions.

    There is one other option. There used to be a web site that offered you all the choices offered in RedHat's install script, and then created a custom install floppy which would automatically install according to those specifications, no human intervention necessary. So you could just go to this site (or it's equivalent for slack or whatever other distribuiton you want, or download whatever tool the site is running and use it yourself) and then make a boot install disk and just shove it and the cdrom in every machine. I think the boot floppy/dump from cdrom method will work faster.