Stroller <strol...@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> writes: > On 24 June 2011, at 02:02, Harry Putnam wrote: > >> I just happened to run into a situation where rsync would have been >> really handy to have on board while booting a minimal install iso. >> >> I was surprised to find rsync was not amongst the onboard tools. >> >> Isn't rsync a pretty basic tool to be missing from a bootable install >> disc? > > The goal of the minimal install CDs is to make them small. I don't > know how large they are now, but there used to be debate (regularly, > IIRC, on gentoo-dev) about including vi or vim. I think at that time > the minimal CD was down to about 22meg, and there was no way vim would > be included due to its "excessive" size (I think with deps it maybe > ran to as much as 40meg).
I grabbed the weekly minimal install and stage3. The install disc was 111mb. I'm not sure what the motivation is about smallness. Is the difference between 111 and say 155 really much of a factor? I see tools like tr cut yes and many others that although useful tools probably aren't that important in an install cd. Especially one that is supposed to be minimal. > I haven't used Gentoo's install CDs in years. I think there may have > even been a period during which they weren't produced or supported. If > I'm installing a Gentoo system I now always use SystemRescueCD. I > would imagine that would have rsync on it. I fully agree and `SystemRescueCD' is exactly what I ended up using.... still failed to get a working gentoo vm though. Why is it such a bitch to install gentoo into a guest vm?
