Guess it's time to either get a new pendrive, or enter the void.
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Since arch is a rolling release distro, can't you just download an older iso from when it was below 1gb, install it and then update the system?
Check this page: https://archlinux.org/releng/releases/
Use netboot.xyz and let us know how it goes. Iβve always been curious.
I love netboot.xyz. I use it all the time when setting up VPS systems. A lot of KVM-based VPSes have iPXE as a boot option so you can chainload directly into netboot without having to use an ISO.
I prefer installing the OS myself over using any images provided by the provider, so that I know exactly how it was set up.
Netboot.xyz has tools to build your own custom version of it too, with your own options. Useful if you want to host it on an internal server. It's essentially just a set of iPXE scripts.
I've used it a few times, impressive as hell in how simple and effective it is on a small home lab.
*cough* netboot
How do I do that?
I was about to edit in a disclaimer about not asking me that because Iβve never used it with Arch and was half joking because itβs probably a huge pain compared to the iso. Iβm sure it works well for what it does for those who use it. But Iβve never done it specifically with Arch and youβd need to use Ethernet.
It's not a huge pain when you have a motherboard with proper UEFI support and some basic EFI shell knowledge. You just need your thumb drive with an FAT32 filesystem, put the netboot EFI binary on it, boot into the shell and execute the binary. You will need a LAN cable for this because WiFi is not supported in UEFI (AFAIK). The netboot binary will download the ISO image into memory and start it right away. An even better solution is to create the path "/EFI/BOOT/" on the thumb drive and rename the netboot binary to "BOOTx64.EFI", put it into the folder and your BIOS will boot it automatically at startup. If not, you can select it as a valid boot partition in the BIOS menu.
I still have a 128mb usb drive with alpine.
That's impressive, what brand it is?
I dunno. It is a company branded swag gift. Got it like 20 or so years ago when I found it on the ground. Still works. Slow as heck.
found it on the ground
Checks out
This is the way
It's okay, they hadn't invented malware yet
If your phone is rooted you could also build isodrive in Termux to mount any ISO from your phone's storage
Maybe build your own iso that doesn't include the things you won't use?
Yes, but I don't know how to do that. I might do some research on it tho.
I think you could mount the iso and manually delete the packages you dont want. Mounting an iso is as easy as
# mount -o loop /path/to/iso /path/to/mountpoint
You can also chroot into it while it is mounted: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot
Disclaimer, I am not sure if deleting files inside the iso makes it weight less.
I don't know either, sorry.. but there's obviously a way. π€£ If you find a good howto share a link.
I lost my 4G drive, it's in a better place now. It's been serving me since 2003 even when it lost its case to fit in a USB port on the Xbox 360.
Maybe the new owner of the house I moved out of will find it and the outdated copy of Arch Linux on it.
If they have any sense they'll not try to find out what's on it and send it straight to whatever electronics recycling is available.
Sticking a USB device of unknown provenance into your computer is just asking for trouble. (When you think about it, we even take a risk every time we buy one.)
Sure, you know it's harmless, but they don't know that, even if you tell them. Who are you? You're just someone who used to live in their house. As far as they know, you might be a freak who gets a kick out of leaving dodgy devices around for people to find.
Pen drives are cheap as dirt nowadays, especially small ones that are like 16GB. I'd just buy a new one.
You're forgetting all the fun about taking this challenge as a personal offense and not doing anything else beyond solving it.
How often has it been used does it still actually have a gigabyte of usable memory
Maybe if you use a file system that supports compression, e.g. btrfs, bcachefs, F2FS, squashfs, or EROFS. Of course, you'd need to add a separate FAT32 EFI System Partition for the bootloader, not sure how to do that.
In the game the little guy wins, so you made it work?
Can you use any sort of compression to fit it? Or just use netboot.xyz
I noticed this too and im curious about what threw it over that 1gb size?
Ventoy be like. P.S good thing tho, thanks for advice, will install too
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