Yet another test: Restore to minimal with 1.6 French iso

(cont'd from Part IV: 2nd Test restoring to minimal with 1.6.1 701 en iso)

One more test again tonight, with the 1.6 French iso. The approach is basically the same. Only difference is I need to modify the "extra.sh" script to automatically change the line "DefaultLanguage=fr_FR" to "DefaultLanguage=en_US", and also edit /etc/apt/sources. list to change the line with "fr-channel" to "en". Here is the complete script package for this iso: restore-minimal-1.6-701-fr.tgz.

Apparently, this version has less factory installed packages, thus resulting in less to-be-removed packages - only a total of 676MB.

EeePC Linux 1.6.1.39 701 fr
Version: Eee PC 1.6.1.39
Build Info: 2008-07-08 05:45

remove_acroread.list 127 MB  Acrobat reader
remove_drivers.list 537 kB  Additional hardware drivers
remove_fr.list  59.7 MB  French locales
remove_games.list 7094 kB  Programs in GAMES folder of PLAY tab
remove_internet.list 119 MB  Programs in INTERNET tab
remove_kids.list 59.2 MB  Programs in LEARN tab
remove_ooo.list  235 MB  Openoffice.org
remove_play.list 52.6 MB  Programs in PLAY tab
remove_settings.list 16.1 MB  Selected programs in SETTINGS tab

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Again original partition layout only used 87% in sda1 (now 97%). After resizing, sda1 reduced from 300 to 156 cylinders, and sda2 increased from 184 to 328 cylinders (original 1.4 GB to 2.6 GB now).

"fdisk -l" output:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         156     1253038+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2             157         484     2634660   83  Linux

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Re-installing Removed Packages from downloaded repository

As for re-installing removed packages, experience is basically the same as with the 701 en-US 1.6.1.5-a4 iso in my previous test. The only difference is this time I am re-installing from a local repository of Asus Update 1.6 repo tree I have downloaded. Please refer to my previous blog for details.

One point worth mentioning is that do not update apt cache before you edit and change /etc/apt/sources.list and replace the original http://update.eeepc.asus.com entries with the local repos entries.

deb file:/media/"D:"/1.6/ common main
deb file:/media/"D:"/1.6/ p701 main
deb file:/media/"D:"/1.6/ en main

Otherwise, synaptic will keep asking to download packages from http://update.eeepc.asus.com and also remember firefox3 as the highest available version for firefox.

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The packages of trouble are the same: mplayer that needs to be download and installed manually. The rest is very easy. In fact, this time I just re-install the packages according to the remove lists. Very easy!

sudo apt-get install `cat remove_drivers.list`
sudo apt-get install `cat remove_games.list.list`
sudo apt-get install `cat remove_games.list`
sudo apt-get install `cat remove_kids.list`
sudo apt-get install `cat remove_ooo.list`
sudo apt-get install `cat remove_settings.list`

For "remove_play.list", I need to download and install mplayer first.

wget http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/pool/mplayer_1.0%7Erc1-12etchxandros10_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i /home/user/mplayer_1.0~rc1-12etchxandros10_i386.deb
apt-get install `cat remove_play.list`

And for packages in "remove_internet.list", I don't know why, but I have to install libpurple0 and pidgin in this sequence.

cat remove_internet.list
apt-get install skype thunderbird asus-usbhandset firefox adobe-flash-player
apt-get install libpurple0
apt-get install pidgin

So like this, re-installation is much faster than with previous tests. And I ended up with 1319MB free disk space.

Like this, it should be possible to also automate the re-installation process with a script!

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Part I: My 1st Trial
Part II: Success - Restoring my EeePC from USB to a Minimal System
Part III: Re-installing Removed Packages to my minimal EeePC Linux 701 4G
Part IV: 2nd Test restoring to minimal with a 1.6.1 701 en iso
Part V: Yet another test with 1.6 French iso
Conclusion: Restore from USB to minimal system