minimal X install

onekk68 · 2024-11-15 13:15:05

Hello, to all.

In the process of get rid of some distribution on my computer, I've installed Devuan daedalus on the computer.

Now I have among other two partitions, one minimal of about 2GB whit a minimal install of devuan used only to boot other operating system (Windows 10 and the various flavour of Linux I need to test things).

my big whish is to have a minimal Xorg install to be able to run an editor on the X to edit things like the Grub configuration.

But I have installed these packages:

xserver-xorg-core, xinit, xorg-driver-vesa, twm and xterm

package names could be probably wrong, but as I' writing from the other devuan installation I can't see the exact names.

I have a problem as root and user to startx with a minimal xinitrc that will start xterm and twm, it fails with ane error related to seatd_libseatd error -9

I have filled 93% of the partition so eve some hints on what to purge will be appreciated.

Any hints will be appreciated.

Kind regards

Carlo D.

Last edited by onekk68 (2024-11-16 19:13:24)

stopAI · 2024-11-15 16:50:54

Hello.
You need seat and session management daemon.
Just install elogind.

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends elogind

onekk68 · 2024-11-15 17:03:44

Thanks, I will try this and let you know if this resolve things.

About the way to clean the installation from unnnecessary file to free space, do you have any hints?

TIA and thanks again.

Kind regards
Carlo D.

GlennW · 2024-11-15 21:24:00

you need seatd installed, but elogind may do the job.

stopAI · 2024-11-16 11:24:23

About the way to clean the installation from unnnecessary file to free space, do you have any hints?

You can check this https://wiki.debian.org/ReduceDebian#Re … _footprint

delgado · 2024-11-16 12:09:18

Invest 20 bugs in a new SSD. Runnung devuan/debian using a 2 GB parftiion can be quite masochistic these days. Anyway, not my decision.

If the current kernel works, you may deinstall the previous (now backup) kernel. This frees about 250 MB of kernel modules and has to be repeated after a kernel upgrade.
You may use apt with "--no-install-recommends".

Regards

onekk68 · 2024-11-16 12:39:37

Running devuan/debian using a 2 GB parftiion can be quite masochistic these days.

The point is that is is a simple service install only to have grub decoupled from any other Linux distribution or OS I have installed on the hard disk.

I have usually many OS on my computer:
- a working distribution, where I do most of my work
- a play distribution, where I experiment things
- another test distribution, maybe
- A windows install

So I've resolved to use the "small debian" to manage the grub.
But i have to edit files by hand, so having a graphical install will permit to do it in a more easy way.

Kind regards

Carlo D.

Last edited by onekk68 (2024-11-16 19:13:58)

onekk68 · 2024-11-16 19:23:54

Some updates, after some fiddling around probably I have solved a little, not perfect but working.

- seatd is installed, but probably the error is not relevant
- xorg server is started and the terminal is brought up, the two problems was:
1) no font installed- resolved to install the 100dpi xorg font
2) some problems in permission as a normal user permissions to access mouse and keyboard was not set properly I have to add the user to the input group

Adding LIBSEATD_BACKEND (or something similar as I'm using my broken memory) was not a solution

exiting X with ALTGR -Stamp + k wil lnot work, or to explain better, the X server is shut off but the control is not returned to the console.

Not a big problem however as the installation is a minimal install to have the ability to have two teminal opens:

- one to fire up an editor maybe with su to edit grub configuration files
- one to fire up maybe a less session to read notes added to the /home directory (that is separate from the others on disk) placed here mounting explicitly the "boot management" partition and adding files to "/home/boot-user"

To clean things:

- apt clean

has done most of the job needed to having a more functional thing, with 2GB partition probably I could not ask more than that.

I will not mark it SOLVED for now, as maybe someone will have more detailed advices.

Kind regards

Carlo D.

greenjeans · 2024-11-18 23:06:05

If you're just looking for something small to use a text editor in a graphic environment, the Vuu-do minimal I made some 7 years ago now, is a mini Devuan 1 (Jessie). It has a full Openbox system but without any extra programs like a browser or music player, it was intended to be a system for the user to build on.

The .iso is only 347 mb and unpacks to right around 1.1 gigs or a little better, it does include all the infrastructure including the Pluma text editor and all other utilities, it's light and fast and only uses around 125 mb of RAM at idle.

It's old and so not updateable, but may serve you pretty well for your intended use, and leaves you some breathing room on that 2 gig partition.

But one issue, it's a project, not a distro, so I made it English only and deleted almost all the translation files, so if you need it in another language it might not work for you.

Files are on sourceforge at the link in my signature line below.

onekk68 · 2024-11-19 12:05:51

Hello, @greenjeans.

Many thanks for the info, it will be interesting to have some insight, about the process to make a similar but updated installation.

I have not found many things around about the new way of managing the logind, seatd or elogind or what and other details, like why the minimal install shen told to install grub2 will not install grub-mkconfig.

As said in the first post this "minimal partiton" is the one I use to manage the grub.cfg.

I know that I could wirte it "by hand" without using the /etc/grub.d infrastructure.

Did anyone know where to find these "detailed" information, for Devuan Daedalus?

Kind regards

Carlo D.

fsmithred · 2024-11-19 19:35:55

I can't think of what you need to edit other than /etc/default/grub to enable os-prober so that when you run update-grub on your minimal partition, it will automatically add entries for all your other installed systems... unless they have an encrypted root partition. In that case, you would need to create some menu entries in /etc/grub.d/40-custom. Write them to use the /vmlinuz and /initrd.img links in each of the systems so you don't have to keep changing it with every kernel upgrade.

Re: Vuu-do - I think greenjeans managed to remove all the hidden fat. He was ruthless. Boot the iso and get a list of installed packages to use as a guide for what to install. Dig into old posts to read about how it was made.

onekk68 · 2024-11-19 20:01:48

Thanks @fsmithred.

Not a big issue but OS prober seems broken as it place a bunch of duplicate entries on the created grub.cfg.

I will see the old thread about vuu-do to guess where is the fat you are talking about.

Many thansk for the reply and regards

Carlo D.

greenjeans · 2024-11-19 22:41:55

Well a lot of the stuff I got away with on Vuu-do is no longer possible, that was 7 years ago, and the whole thing is devoid of sooooo much stuff that is mandatory now.

But the thing is, if you just want to manage grub and do some text editing, it won't matter one bit. Everything on it works regardless of it's age. In fact I still run the full version on a couple machines, I just use an imageapp for the browser as it's the only thing that absolutely requires a newer version.

The mini is 347 mb, about 1.1 gigs installed, and after install you can trim it down even more, I put basically every piece of firmware in the repo on it to insure functionality of all hardware, so after install you can delete whatever you aren't using, it's also got some other programs you might not use, so you can easily get it down to less than a gig.

869 packages in it, I could post the list here if the mods don't think it would take up too much space, or e-mail it or I don't know if stuff like pastebin is still around but could do that.

I even updated the OS-prober on it to properly recognize and name Vuu-do and Devuan installs which it didn't do previously, also got rid of old entries that are no longer around.

But as far as building something like it today from the Daedalus repo, not happening, it would be waaaaay bigger. Vuu-do was built entirely on the last gen of Linux in general, pure GTK2, Python2, ALSA, 3.16 kernel, etc.

You should try it OP, it's a liveCD so you can take it for a spin easily enough, and it uses the refracta installer so install is all of about 5 minutes.

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · Yesterday 09:50:09

perhaps slightly off-topic but still interesting/thought-provoking:
(especially for the distro/curious/experimenters/hoppers)

https://easyos.org/user/how-to-fix-broken-video.html

Barry Kauler's Devuan Daedalus version of EasyOS(woofwoof!):

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=12851

more for those so inclined:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=136062#p136062

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=136066#p136066

can snowballs go down rabbitholes? indeed.

https://devuanpup.wordpress.com/

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2024-11-15 13:15:05

minimal X install

#2 2024-11-15 16:50:54

Re: minimal X install

#3 2024-11-15 17:03:44

Re: minimal X install

#4 2024-11-15 21:24:00

Re: minimal X install

#5 2024-11-16 11:24:23

Re: minimal X install

#6 2024-11-16 12:09:18

Re: minimal X install

#7 2024-11-16 12:39:37

Re: minimal X install

#8 2024-11-16 19:23:54

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#9 2024-11-18 23:06:05

Re: minimal X install

#10 2024-11-19 12:05:51

Re: minimal X install

#11 2024-11-19 19:35:55

Re: minimal X install

#12 2024-11-19 20:01:48

Re: minimal X install

#13 2024-11-19 22:41:55

Re: minimal X install

#14 Yesterday 09:50:09

Re: minimal X install

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