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As an example of this, I've just made a fresh Arch Linux installation on a 2Gb sd card. It has kde, compiz-fusion, openoffice, firefox and some other useful applications, like working madwifi drivers.
I have made a disk image file of it and compressed it to 600Mb. I don't have anywhere to host the file, so any ideas of how to make it available would be nice.
Remember: This is my first try at this. There are a few quirks I'm sure, but it works fine here. If people try this out, we might be able to develop this into a very elegant way of trying out different Linux versions for different uses on the eee.
WARNING:
The installation process is extremely quick and simple, but requires just a little bit of command line understanding, and it is possible to destroy your system and a lot of data if you do something completely wrong.
Here's how to install it on a sd-disk or any external drive:
1. Download the image file, preferably to an external harddrive or to another computer than your eee.
2. Uncompress it:
$ bunzip2 archeeemage-20071218.img.bz2
3. Insert the sd-disk or usb stick you want to install it on. It must be at least 2Gb.
ANOTHER WARNING: THE SECTION BELOW IS IMPORTANT TO GET RIGHT!
4. Find out what the device file for the drive is. The sd-disk is usually /dev/sdb, but you must check this thoroughly, you might destroy a lot of data if you get this wrong! I usually make sure by looking at the /dev directory before inserting the card, and then checking what device files turn up when I insert it. This is the only "critical" thing in this process.
5. As superuser, write the Arch image on to the disk:
# cat eee_arch-20071218.img.bz2 > /dev/sdx
where the x in sdx is the letter of the disk device you fount in 4.
Remember: This is the place you can destroy your data. Don't write to a device unless you know for sure that it's the correct device and that there is no data you want to keep on it. Everything on the device, all partitions, files boot sectors, everything will be destroyed.
6. Wait a few minutes. It takes a while, and nothing happens. After a while the command finishes and you have an installed Arch Linux.
If your sd-disk is larger than 2Gb:
7. Resize the partition:
# cfdisk /dev/sdx
Delete the 2Gb primary partition, then create a new which uses all the space on the card. Write and quit.
8. Resize the file system. Resizing the partition doesn't resize the file system on it. First take the disk out and insert it again, wait a few seconds. Then:
# resize2fs /dev/sdx1
Now you restart the machine. Press escape when the asus screen comes up, and select to boot from the drive you installed Arch on.
If something goes wrong, please post here, and I'm sure we'll sort it out. But if you have erased the disk with the only copy of your family photo album, there is nothing I can do about it, I'm sorry. Just don't do that!
And of course. Nothing of this will make sense before I find a place to put the file :)
Edit:
I've now uploaded the image as a torrent to linuxtracker.org
I'll keep seeding it at least for a few days :)
Edit2:
I am very glad to say that now there is two mirrors for the Archeee images. One is hosted by SublimePrte and the other by Komododave. Thanks a lot to both of you!
At this moment there is two different images, one full, with most things you'll need installed, and one minimal, with only X Windows and fluxbox installed apart from the base. Both are made to be installed on a 2Gb sd-card.
Here are the links:
http://archeeemage.coderseffigy.com/
http://www.3eportal.com/filoktetes/
Enjoy :)
Edited by filoktetes, 30 December 2007 - 03:40 AM.
