Ubuntu Mini-RAM HOWTO

[wayover13]

Jeff Waugh Wrote: 
> <quote who="wayover13">
> [color=green]
> > I can confirm that automount of disks does not work "out of the box"
> with
> > this Icewm minimal Ubuntu install, having now tried it. The nice
> feature
> > of having inserted CD's/disks/USB drive appear iconified on the
> desktop
> > when you insert them, as happens under stock Ubuntu, seems to be a
> feature
> > of the Gnome desktop. Undoubtedly there's a way to make this happen
> in
> > Icewm, but that sort of tinkering is beyond my time limits at the
> moment.
> > So, with the minimal install some of the user-friendliness features
> of
> > Ubuntu (courtesy the Gnome desktop environment, it seems) do get
> lost.
> 
> Run the 'gnome-volume-manager' daemon, and 'gnome-volume-properties'
> to
> configure it.

Just trying to make sure we're on the same page here. We're talking
about a minimal Ubuntu install for older, low-resource systems, right?
One that uses a lightweight desktop--Icewm in this case--rather than
Gnome, right? I would assume that, since the Gnome desktop has not been
installed, the whole idea being that it is too resource- and
space-intensive for older machines, that the gnome-volume-manager is
not going to be present either. I didn't check but, following Ingo's
directions for doing this minimal install, I would presume that
gnome-volume-manager and all other aspects of the Gnome desktop are
going to be missing. Have you checked to see whether this is the case?
If I'm right, trying to run gnome-volume-manager on this setup is most
likely going to result in the response "command not found." That's a
real show-stopper, but it's likely not the only problem. Let's say we
try to apt-get the missing gnome-volume-manager, as Ingo has instructed
to do for installing the rest of the system. Most likely trying to
apt-get gnome-volume-manager is going to get you the whole Gnome
desktop. But the express purpose of this thread is to install Ubuntu
without it, instead using a lightweight alternative--Icewm. But let's
conjecture that gnome-volume-manager could be apt-get(ted)
independently of the Gnome desktop: what then? Then, it's capapbility
of making icons appear on the desktop for mounted filesystems would
need to be somehow integrated with Icewm. Icewm seems not to support
desktop icons, though there is a separate package (called idesk, I
think) that can give desktop icons for Icewm. Somehow Gnome's method
for making mounted filesystem icons appear on the desktop would need to
be integrated with idesk and the desktop icons it can make to appear on
the Icewm desktop. Somehow, I think this is not going to be very
simple. I think Gnome may be using supermount for this, and supermount
needs to handle not just the dynamic mounting of a filesystem, but that
in turn needs to trigger idesk or whatever program is going to make an
icon appear on the Icewm desktop. And so on. So, I remain convinced
that key user-friendliness features Ubuntu offers, namely the
automounting of inserted filesystems and representation of them by a
desktop icon, are lost with this minimal install. Furthermore, I think
making them work is going to a time- and labor-intensive project.
You're welcome to prove me wrong by attempting an install such as Ingo
has described and then proving that the user-friendliness feature I've
mentioned works on it. But I'm not holding my breath :)

James


-- 
wayover13