Space saving on the plug

[mgillespie]

I know many people run their root filesystems on extrernal SD, or USB HDD, but I am still perservering with using the onboard flash to store my root filesystem.

Anyone got any tips for freeing up space?   Whilst I'm not at a critical level (30% of the flash left), it's nice to ask these things in advance.

My Tips:

I found out about the strip command (in binutils package), that strips debugging symbols from files, making them smaller, thats a VERY handy tip that saved me quite alot of space (I ran it on everything in /usr/bin!!!)

I also found out I can do the following to show the size of a directories sub directories (sorted):

Code:

du -sm * | sort -n

Any other tips for saving space?  Anything that can be removed from the Ubuntu filesystem to save flash space?

[fnordianslip]

Just ordered my plug a couple of days ago, so I guess I've got at least a month to get familiar with the beasty.   

I don't have an answer for you but a couple of related questions.

1) How much free space is there on the MTD with the shipped stock Ubuntu image?
2) Is the stock Ubuntu JFFS2 image compressed or not?

[hypn0toad]

uhm i dont know if the ubuntu JFFS2 image is compressed sorry

but i know i just got the plug and it came with about 330MB free out of the box

[frafra]

1. 30% used
2. It's compressed. I don't know wich algorithm it uses, but it works sooo well

[fnordianslip]

Any other tips for saving space?  Anything that can be removed from the Ubuntu filesystem to save flash space?

It's a bit obvious, but 'apt-get clean' is often overlooked.

[mail4asim]

fnordianslip thank you for the tip. I was up to 67% used.. and with the "apt-get clean" I am down to 47%. That's a huge saving.. will have to readup on the apt-get a bit

[mgillespie]

Posted these tips in the Wiki:

http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Freeing_up_space_on_the_plug#Other_Space_Saving_Tips

If anyone has any others, post there here, and I'll pop them in the Wiki, or tuck in and update the wiki youself.

[mgillespie]

Another tip:

I used the Alpha6 installer which came with a root filesystem, you can see what packages you have installed by using this command:

Code:

dpkg -l |grep '^ii'

(or if you want to send it to a text file:

Code:

dpkg -l |grep '^ii' >installedstuff.txt

I determined that I had x11-common installed, and I have no requirement for X11 on this box, so removed that, and all it's dependancies with the following command:

Code:

apt-get remove x11-common ; apt-get autoremove ; apt-get clean

This dropped by flash usage from 45% to 35%   Nice...