A swiss army knife iso

[linux18]

===========================| Summary |=========================
By combining the lightweight power of debian 5.05 and xubuntu 6.06, I have produced a one of a kind live cd with far fewer system requirements than a standard ubuntu disc. With this technology, it is possible to boot a live cd with xfce desktop environment in just 82 megabytes of ram without swap! With 128 megabytes of ram and a swap file the system will feel about as fast a ubunutu 10.04 live cd with 512 megabytes of ram and a swap file. Right now the ISO is still expirimental, but I forsee it as a great platform for troubleshooting, testing hardware, fixing problems with existing ubuntu installations, and messing with partitions - all while maintaining the 'feel' of ubuntu (including two panels, four workspaces, and the full xfce4 desktop environment). In short, a swiss army knife of tools all packed into an iso smaller than 300MB
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=======================| Inside The ISO |=====================
Requirements:
Minimum: 82MB of ram and a 133MHz 80486 cpu
Recommended: 96MB of ram and a pentum 2
Best: 128MB of ram and a pentium 4

Removed from xubuntu 6.06 ISO:
almost everything not required to run the computer

Added to the ISO:
deborphan and the startup configuration

What's in the ISO:
mousepad, xfarchiver, xfterminal, synaptic,
gparted, network manager, and a few random packages
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=========================| Whats Next |=========================
I'm looking for suggestions on diagnostic tools and scripts that I shoud include in the nextversion. Please suggest tools to include in your comments. I'm also putting together a customizing script to allow anyone to customize it.
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==========================| Download |==========================
The iso comes as a two part .7z file.
There are two ways to download, script or direct link:
Script:
Links:
http://download455.mediafire.com/ijl...er-fast.7z.001
http://download507.mediafire.com/rmc...er-fast.7z.002

[varunendra]

Just finished downloading & tried on VMware (512 MB RAM, 2.8GHz C2D- single core in use).

Loading took roughly around 50-58 sec., looks nice!

A few quick suggestions:

• Web Browser is missing, should be inclueded.
• Would be nice if the archiver supports .rar, .7z extensions (seems it is not there yet)
• For a 'troubleshooting' live cd, Windows Manager Tweaks seems unnecessary (no prob. if has negligible size & side effect! )

A few issues I had:

• My net conn. is suffering severe problems for almost a month, and such problems are common with Indian ISPs. Had a lot of trouble to download (for the first two days, the page wouldn't open like it was a dead link!). Accordingly, I suggest to kindly include a torrent link if possible.
• After downloading, the second part looked like corrupt, I wasted one more day to download it (in fact almost two! yes it's true- 2 days for 119 MB due to continuous breaks causing download-freeze !!). Same again. 7-zip on windows (WinRAR also) failed extracting saying "unsupported compression method for iso". Then I tried p7zip on ubuntu and only then I could extract it successfully. Accordingly I suggest to use original 'One-Piece' iso for torrent, and some standard format for uploads in compressed parts.

Suggestion for additional tools:

• I think a rescue/troubleshooting disk is incomplete without TestDisk and PartImage.
• Couldn't test but does it have ntfs support?
• A decent PDF reader.

EDIT: Oh.., and 'Quit' doesn't work, 'Power' icon works as log-off (ends xfce session). So had to shut down in two-steps. The 'Quit' option should either be removed or should be made to work as expected.
Overall an appreciable work though!

[snowpine]

Interesting concept, thanks for sharing it! A couple of questions before I commit to the download: Does it support ext4 and GRUB2? Those are two must-haves for troubleshooting my current install.

[varunendra]

Hmm.... looks like no to both your questions, I'm not confident though!

man grub returned grub 0.97, and gparted didn't show option to format in ext4. Maybe snaps can give a better idea.

[linux18]

Interesting concept, thanks for sharing it! A couple of questions before I commit to the download: Does it support ext4 and GRUB2? Those are two must-haves for troubleshooting my current install.

no etx4 and grub2, the disk is mostly still 6.06 and I didn't wan't to keep the 6.06 packages for ntfs, xfs, jfs, and reiser.

This first version is essentially to make the ISO as small as possible (ubuntu is a big iso after decompression, which means more memory usage on a live cd) now that I've cut everything out of it, I can start to add packages back into it which include grub2, various filesystem support, and tools for rescuing data off the hard disk.

if anyone can also point to any remianing unnecessary packages or tweaks that can be made, that would also be a big help. I only have a 14KBps upload speed so I wan't real changes before I upload another one.

[snowpine]

no etx4 and grub2, the disk is mostly still 6.06 and I didn't wan't to keep the 6.06 packages for ntfs, xfs, jfs, and reiser.

This first version is essentially to make the ISO as small as possible (ubuntu is a big iso after decompression, which means more memory usage on a live cd) now that I've cut everything out of it, I can start to add packages back into it which include grub2, various filesystem support, and tools for rescuing data off the hard disk.

if anyone can also point to any remianing unnecessary packages or tweaks that can be made, that would also be a big help. I only have a 14KBps upload speed so I wan't real changes before I upload another one.

Fair enough; I will definitely be keeping an eye on the project though. Great idea and good luck with it!

[DasEi]

I havent tried it, but looks very nice, though should support ext4 and recent advantages made for other filesystems. An idea to include is :

-blkid
-testdisk
-fsck/e2fsck

[linux18]

I'm working on the next version and considering eliminating ubuntu 6.06 for a lighter system and chrooting to the ubuntu programs. Thus maximum ubuntu compatibility and minimum overhead.

[ventrical]

Hi linux18,

I downloaded the file and the zip file will not open or extract.

It there a download site just for the .iso file?

thanks

[linux18]

Hi linux18,

I downloaded the file and the zip file will not open or extract.

It there a download site just for the .iso file?

thanks

It's a .7z file, you can extract it with peazip http://sourceforge.net/projects/peaz...l.deb/download

It's still an experimental iso and has little in the way of rescue tools.

mediafire has a 200MB upload limit, so a single 250MB ISO is too big to upload