Slim down Raspbian?

[darrylb]

Has anyone tried to slim down Raspbian? I am ultimately looking to minimize Raspbian to simply be X+OpenBox+IceWeasel+OpenJDK. That's it.

Any direction or thoughts in how I could do this, would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[SirLagz]

I have a 'stripped' version of Raspbian available called Raspbian Server Edition
I've stripped out as much as I could while retaining functionality for a server, but you could use that as a starting point and just install X / Openbox / Iceweasel / OpenJDK ?

[surefyre]

I'm currently stripping down Raspbian to reduce the Pi-Point (Wifi Access Point project) SD card image size - it's a slow old process /

Would be nice to have a totally bare Raspbian with apt and SSHD so you add add what you want to it. I'll be posting this stripped image shortly at www.pi-point.co.uk in case it's any use for you to build what you need on top of.

[SirLagz]

I'm currently stripping down Raspbian to reduce the Pi-Point (Wifi Access Point project) SD card image size - it's a slow old process /

Would be nice to have a totally bare Raspbian with apt and SSHD so you add add what you want to it. I'll be posting this stripped image shortly at http://www.pi-point.co.uk in case it's any use for you to build what you need on top of.

I tried starting from scratch with debootstrap but found it was easier to just strip down Raspbian.
If you would like to use the package list of what I've stripped out of Raspbian, feel free
There's still a lot that can be stripped out of Raspbian Server Edition but I wanted to keep it fairly functional as standard. I might make a further stripped version soon though.

[milhouse]

I'll be posting this stripped image shortly at http://www.pi-point.co.uk in case it's any use for you to build what you need on top of.

Rather than post a stripped image, wouldn't it be easier to post a script that converts the standard Raspbian into a "stripped" image, and then installs whatever binaries (hopefully from standard repositories) are required to turn the stripped OS into an access point, or web server or whatever?

[darrylb]

SirLagz: Is there any possibility in me getting a copy of that image you built? or instructions on how I can go about building it similarly?

Thanks!

[SirLagz]

SirLagz: Is there any possibility in me getting a copy of that image you built? or instructions on how I can go about building it similarly?

Thanks!

Right here --> http://sirlagz.net/2012/12/31/raspbian- ... rsion-2-2/
There's a link to a script there which is pretty much what I used to build RSE.
It's just a list of packages that my script then strips out of RSE.

Edit -
Also, just found this while digging through the forums
http://blog.kmp.or.at/2012/05/build-you ... -pi-image/

[darrylb]

Out of curiosity, have you benchmarked resource utilization before and after removal of those packages?

If not, I most likely will be...

[SirLagz]

No I didn't.
I never thought to haha, if you do it, would be great to see the results !

[hayesey]

what's wrong with just using the raspbian installer on the raspbian website to build your own stripped down image? This is what I've done, it just has ssh running and nothing else (aside from the base OS of course).

That's way easier than installing the full raspbian official image and then trying to remove all the extra packages you don't need.

[SirLagz]

what's wrong with just using the raspbian installer on the raspbian website to build your own stripped down image? This is what I've done, it just has ssh running and nothing else (aside from the base OS of course).

That's way easier than installing the full raspbian official image and then trying to remove all the extra packages you don't need.

Time.
It's a lot faster to write an image and then strip the packages than downloading individual packages and installing them via the installer, at least for me anyway.
I did the installer once, and that one time was enough for me haha

[poing]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the benefit of a 'slimmed down' Raspbian except for SD card space of which I have plenty?

[hayesey]

Time.
It's a lot faster to write an image and then strip the packages than downloading individual packages and installing them via the installer, at least for me anyway.
I did the installer once, and that one time was enough for me haha

so is there a list of everything that is installed to the raspbian normal image above a base Debian install?

The main reason for doing this other than saving SD card space (although that should be enough of a reason on it's own), is security. It's not safe to have services and applications installed that you don't know about and don't need. You could argue that it doesn't matter on a computer you are just using to play about with but my argument would be that getting into bad habits is never a good idea.

[SirLagz]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the benefit of a 'slimmed down' Raspbian except for SD card space of which I have plenty?

Not everyone has huge SD cards.
I'm working off a 2gig SD card for one of my installations, and the default raspbian install pretty much fills that SD card up.

so is there a list of everything that is installed to the raspbian normal image above a base Debian install?

Not that I know of, though it wouldn't be too hard to get the list. If you want, I can get you the list ?

[mihol]

another approach might be to use the new TinyCore (TC) distribution for RaspberryPi.
It seems under active deveolpment according to their forum and many posts in thread http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.ph ... 30.30.html

Regards Mike