[sf-lug] what (still?) fits on 8cm CD?

Thu Feb 21 07:19:09 PST 2019

Current Finnix still fits:
$ curl -I -s https://www.finnix.org/releases/111/finnix-111.iso | grep  
-i -e '^HTTP/' -e '^location: ' -e '^content-length: '
HTTP/2 302
location: http://ftp-osl.osuosl.org/pub/finnix/111/finnix-111.iso
$ curl -I -s http://ftp-osl.osuosl.org/pub/finnix/111/finnix-111.iso |  
grep -i -e '^HTTP/' -e '^location: ' -e '^content-length: '
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 167772160
$ [ 167772160 -le $(expr 189000 '*' 1024) ] && echo FITS\!
FITS!
$
There may be some others ... but most don't, or no longer, fit.

> From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: what (still?) fits on 8cm CD? (was: SF-LUG meeting notes  
> for Monday 18 February 2019)
> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2019 04:01:19 -0800

> What (still?) fits on 8cm CD?
>
> Checking over most of my inventory ...
> https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:cds_and_images_etc
> I find only a handful that fit the 189,000 KiB capacity
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-ROM#Capacity
>
> Many/most/all(?) of them being old/obsolete versions, ... however
> there may be some distro(s) and the like and/or flavors thereof
> (netinstall or similar) that might hint at possibilities where
> /maybe/ they still fit the >= 189,000 KiB space requirement.
> Anyway, here's what I snagged from my listing:
> KiB    |architecture|full descriptor
>   9,716|i386     |CentOS-5.5 i386 netinstall
>  47,758|i386     |Linuxcare Bootable Toolbox (LBT) 2.0
>  58,536|x86      |Gentoo Linux x86 2007.0
> 116,622|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 102 x86/AMD64
> 119,362|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 106 x86/AMD64
> 119,808|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 107 x86/AMD64
> 122,880|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 108 x86/AMD64
> 134,144|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 109 x86/AMD64
> 138,240|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 110 x86/AMD64
> 163,392|i386     |Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 "Etch" - Official i386  
> NETINST Binary-1 20080218-14:15
> 173,056|amd64    |Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.5 "Squeeze" - Official amd64  
> NETINST Binary-1 20120512-20:40
>
>> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
>> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Monday 18 February 2019
>> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2019 00:33:36 -0800
>
>> Quoting aaronco36 (aaronco36 at SDF.ORG):
>>
>>> Rick M and/or Michael P are welcome to jump in if I'm badly
>>> mistaken, but to my admittedly-limited knowledge, there is no
>>> "ready-made" "as-is" bootable ISO image of Debian [GNU]/Linux Stable
>>> [10] for i386 and amd64 PC architectures that is less than ~290 MiB
>>> in size.
>>
>> Nope.  Spot-on.  The smallest images are the 'netinst' ones.  I have:
>>
>> Liten-Datamaskin:isos rick$ ls -lh *.iso | grep netinst | grep  
>> debian | awk '{ print $5 "  " $9 }'
>> 326M  debian-unofficial-with-nonfree-firmware-9.7.0-amd64-netinst.iso
>> 413M  debian-unofficial-with-nonfree-firmware-9.7.0-i386-netinst.iso
>> Liten-Datamaskin:isos rick$
>>
>> Those are the unofficial images with, as it says on the tin, an
>> extensive collection of non-free firmware files added in -- so a bit
>> larger than the official ones.  Official Debian's 9.8 netinst ISOs
>> appear to be:
>>
>> 292M  debian-9.8.0-amd64-netinst.iso
>> 378M  debian-9.8.0-i386-netinst.iso
>>
>> ...as seen on
>> http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/i386/iso-cd/
>> http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-cd/
>>
>> (A netinst image contains just the minimal amount of software to start
>> the installation and fetch the remaining packages over the Internet from
>> the package repos.  It's highly efficient and fast if you have
>> broadband; you fetch only what you say to install, getting the current
>> versions immediately.)
>>
>>> Are Debian's downloadable "Tiny CDs, flexible USB sticks, etc."
>>> described at the bottom-left of [11] *really* to be considered as
>>> already ready-made as-is bootable images that could be directly
>>> burned, for example, onto a 210 MiB mini-CD??
>>
>> Reference at link #11 was to https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst, the
>> netinst images -- so no.  I like the netinst images a lot, and they're
>> pretty darned small, but are no longer 290MB small.  Though, I must say,
>> look like the 64-bit one w/o non-free firmware missed by just a smadge, nei?
>>
>>> (I'm definitely among those who have some doubts on this latter point :-\)
>>>
>>> An interesting distro besides the above that "might" be installable
>>> or at least usable in some fashion or another via a sub-210 MiB size
>>> download and subsequent burn to mini-CD is Alpine Linux [12].
>>
>>
>> Sure.  _That_ is svelte.  And well-respected.  It's kind-of targeted
>> as a firewall/router distribution, FWIW, not that it'd be perverse to
>> use it for, say, a full-blown server or for embedded systems.  Or
>> desktop even, I guess, though it's not a use-case that's likely to be
>> wildly popular.
>>
>>
>>> That being said above, since a "Network connection is required" to
>>> get started using Alpine Linux Standard as per [13], this required
>>> network connection is most likely via wired/Ethernet and _not_ via
>>> wireless -- IMO most likely due to all the extra drivers that using
>>> wireless adapters and their cumulative diskspace requirements likely
>>> entail.
>>
>> Doing some reading (http://lists.alpinelinux.org/alpine-devel/6008.html),
>> looks like the official Alpine Linux ISOs don't include a cache of
>> non-free firmware packages, as they wanted the ISOs to be free/libre
>> software -- but they have no problem with someone doing a respin to add
>> such in.
>>
>>
>>> Which I think would then align with what Bobbie S wrote near
>>> the bottom of [14] regarding driver and other updates for using
>>> SliTaz Linux 5 in particular, here:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> Maybe it's just me, but this all seems like a whole lot of difficulty to
>> go through, when you could instead put any ISO you like onto a USB flash
>> disk and, if you want, unpack any additional non-free firmware files
>> you desire into it, to use as needed during installation.
>>
>> I haven't seen even i386 boxen in long years that cannot boot from USB,
>> and suspect any that cannot are _hopelessly_ ancient, but one could
>> takes care of that bizarre edge-case by putting Plop Boot Manager on,
>> just for giggles, a floppy disk, for purposes of side-booting over to
>> USB.
>>
>> i386 boxen that don't even have USB at all?  Feh.  I'm thinking of the
>> Wiley cartoon on the 1st edition of Cheskwick and Bellovin's firewall
>> book:  'Must be this tall to storm castle.'
>> http://wilyhacker.com/1e/cover.jpg
>> http://wilyhacker.com/1e/
>