[ubuntu-mythtv] Minimum installation requirements details

[Mario Limonciello]

Steve,

Well that was the original spirit of the project.  A minimalized setup.  At some
point you need the balance between being able to easily administer the box and
staying minimal.  This is where Xfce falls into our mix.  Openbox is just too
difficult to handle for most people.

Perhaps the best idea for you is to start with a mythbuntu frontend install, and
then remove packages that you don't need.  I'll warn you though, if
mythbuntu-desktop isn't installed, update-manager won't be usable between
7.10->8.04.

I do think that for your specialized setups, you can probably shrink down this
size significantly (since a lot of administration items don't *need* to be
present for your users)

Regards,


Steven Ellis wrote:
> Mario Limonciello wrote:
>> Steve Ellis from OpenMedia was wondering about the minimum required
>> size and RAM to install for a Frontend.  He was intending on
>> installing onto a flash based device.
>>
>> Hard Drive Size
>> Frontend
>> Previously, I quoted him at just shy of a gigabyte, ~945 megabytes. 
>> This was with all mythtv plugins removed, no hdhomerun, no xmltv, no
>> proprietary drivers, no themes.
>>
>> I was just thinking about this, and I realized that quote wasn't
>> accurate.  Still there was room to be freed up via the removal of the
>> media playback applications that are installed.  At a minimum, another
>> 50 mb can be freed by taking off mplayer, xine, and vlc.  This doesn't
>> include dependencies that can be autoremoved.  I'd expect this can
>> probably be shrunk even further down after taking those off.
>>
>> Full Install
>> A full installation typically weighs in around 1.5 GB.   This means
>> that an install could be done entirely to compact flash if the user
>> opts to mount /var elsewhere.  Rather than mounting /var/lib, mounting
>> /var will make sure that all logs are put there as well to help
>> increase the life of the drive.
>>
>> Memory
>> The amount of memory required really isn't as large as you would
>> expect.  Looking at the requirements for a standard Gutsy disk, it's a
>> minimum of 320 mb for installation off a live disk.  I suspect our
>> requirement is significantly lower than that because we don't have all
>> of those gnome services that we are running at bootup. 
>>
>> After installation, it appears that the Xfce env / xorg combination is
>> only using ~60mb.  Xfce/xorg/mythfrontend uses around 75 idling.  This
>> will probably go up as larger themes are used.  Knowing this, low
>> power machines (think epia or via) should be feasible still.
>>
> I was looking at this after my conversation with Mario. There are a
> number of bits you don't really need on a true flash frontend, for
> example I don't need all of the xorg drivers. I'd still need mplayer on
> my frontends but there are a bunch of other bits that could be stripped out.
> 
> I'm wondering at a slightly different approach. Rather than mythbuntu I
> could do a minimal gutsy install + any dependancies for a
> mythtv-frontend. It would be really nice to have something that is
> maintainable on a 1Gb flash drive. The added benefit of making the
> install as small as possible is to reduce any patch updates required.
> 
> Anyone on the list tried for a minimal frontend on Ubuntu?
> 
> Steve
> 

-- 
Mario Limonciello
superm1 at ubuntu.com

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