Setting up repositories for my EeePC 4G

Now that I have my EeePC restored and unionfs converted to aufs, the first thing to do is of course setting up network and do some updates. For this, I need to set up apt repositories. I've done this many times already for different EeePC models. Here is the /etc/apt/sources.list file for my EeePC 4G:

##Asus update
deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701 p701 main
deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en p701 main

deb-src http://cle.linux.org.tw/EeePC/1.0.6 v106 main contrib non-free
deb-src http://asusxntest.xandros.com/asus-source/p7xx/1.0.4/ v104 main contrib non-free
deb-src http://asusxntest.xandros.com/asus-source/p7xx/1.0.6/ v106 main contrib non-free

#XEPC.org repository
##NB. dev are kde development packages
#wget http://updates.xepc.org/dists/p701/xepc-pubkey.txt
#sudo apt-key add xepc-pubkey.txt
deb http://updates.xepc.org/ p701 main dev

##Community repository for EeePC
#wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/key.asc
#sudo apt-key add key.asc
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/ p701 main etch

##Special ASUS EEE/Xandros repository by kost
deb http://ftp.linux.hr/asuseee/xandros/ binary/
deb-src http://ftp.linux.hr/asuseee/xandros/ source/

##Xandros4 repos (not fully compatible)
deb http://dccamirror.xandros.com/dccri/ dccri-3.0 main
deb http://www.geekconnection.org/ xandros4 main

##Xandros server 2.0 repository (same base as EeePC but lower KDE version)
#wget http://xnv4.xandros.com/xs2.0/pkg/pool/main/xandros/xandros-archive-keyring_1.0-3_all.deb
#sudo dpkg -i xandros-archive-keyring_1.0-3_all.deb
deb http://xnv4.xandros.com/xs2.0/upkg-srv2 etch main contrib non-free

##Debian etch repositories (not fully compatible)
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free

Please note that some repositories require a PGP key and I have also put the instructions to download and install the PGP key together in this file as comments.

The problem with installing softwares in an EeePC is that the official repositories have only limited softwares, and there are only a few community repositories dedicated for the EeePC. Fortunately, EeePC Linux is based on Xandros 4, which in turn is based on Debian etch and they are lots of software packages available in these 2 distributions.

However, one has to be careful using these other distributions because EeePC Linux versions have their own customized KDE libraries which is incompatible with neither Xandros 4 nor Debian etch. So you won't be able to install any program that requires an updated version of kde libraries or you may break your system. The only exception is the community xepc.org repositories where lazyfai has compiled those updated KDE libraries from sources in an EeePC.

Because of this confusion, apt pinning is a must installing software packages from other distributions, and here is my /etc/apt/preferences file:

Package: *
Pin: origin update.eeepc.asus.com
Pin-Priority: 950

Package: *
Pin: release a=p701
Pin-Priority: 950

Package: *
Pin: release a=v104
Pin-Priority: 950

Package: *
Pin: release a=v106
Pin-Priority: 950

Package: *
Pin: origin updates.xepc.org
Pin-Priority: 850

Package: *
Pin: origin ftp.linux.hr
Pin-Priority: 840

Package: *
Pin: origin ""
Pin-Priority: 800

Package: *
Pin: release a=xandros4
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: origin www.geekconnection.org
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: origin dccamirror.xandros.com
Pin-Priority: 690

Package: *
Pin: release a=etch
Pin-Priority: 550

Please note that even with pinning, one has to be very careful working with apt-get or synaptic installing software packages. If you happen to install some software package and apt-get or synaptic is telling you that it want to upgrade a long long list of programs, then you better stop.

To apply these settings, remember to run "sudo apt-get update" before you actually install any programs.

The next thing I am going to do is to install updates from Asus. But since my EeePC only comes with a 4 GB SSD, and out of which the 1st partition of 2.37 GB is readonly, with only 1.45 GB free disk space available in the 2nd partition, I don't want to waste my precious disk space with 2 copies of the same program (different version) one in the 1st partition and one in the 2nd partition.

Last time when I configured my EeePC, I installed all these Asus updates to the readonly 1st partition with the help of the xepc.org upgrade disc set up as a local repository (and running the system temporarily without unionfs). But this time I want to try something new: a read/write union filesystem. This will be tomorrow's work.

EDIT 2009/6/7: See also this blog for how to obtain and install the PGP key for Debian etch repositories.