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Help: Creating a Minimal OSX (leopard) System

X

XSLord

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
10
0
Hi,

Can somebody help me with how to create a minimal osx (leopard) system.
I need to know which apps are essential, so i can make a bare essential osx system.

Thanx for all how could help me.
 
During the installation process, you are given the option to choose what gets installed. There, you can de-select foreign languages, printer drivers, and the optional apps. That should produce a very lean OS X install.
 
you can also choose to not install the extra fonts which are the asian language fonts and also the iLife apps and audio loops.

but if you really want to go the bare minimum heres a guide on how to install Mac OS X on a flash drive. you can see a list of the essential apps in the bottom picture.
 
there is also a couple of terminal scripts out there to disable dashboard and a few other things to claim back memory, check macosxhints.com
 
Hi,

Richthomas thanks for your reply, yes i know that bare minimum instruction doc, it's very handy, but it's for Tiger, so one of the instructions is giving me a problem:

You will also need BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg. Copy those from the /Library/Receipts in the HDD root to the respective folder on your flash drive.​

I cannot find the BaseSystem.pkg[/B] and Essentials.pkg on my root (/Library/Receipts)!, cause i'm doing it using leopard.
 
neil321 said:
Can you please post the results,thanks
Click to expand...

sure will! but not straight away as i need to create a partition on my external drive as i only have a 1 GB flash drive.

XSLord said:
Hi,

Richthomas thanks for your reply, yes i know that bare minimum instruction doc, it's very handy, but it's for Tiger, so one of the instructions is giving me a problem:

You will also need BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg. Copy those from the /Library/Receipts in the HDD root to the respective folder on your flash drive.​

I cannot find the BaseSystem.pkg[/B] and Essentials.pkg on my root (/Library/Receipts)!, cause i'm doing it using leopard.
Click to expand...

in Leopard BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg are now com.apple.pkg.BaseSystem.bom and com.apple.pkg.Essentials.bom in /Library/Receipts/boms.
 
well i just tried installing Leopard using the guide and it didnt work. it just hung on the grey screen before the intro movie played. i think a few other packages have to be installed but im not sure which.

so i tried Tiger which came with my MacBook Pro as per the guide and it booted successfully. i then used XSlimmer to strip out the PPC code including the apps in the System folder.

the end result was 3 gigs and i couldnt get much slimmer than that unfortunately. i think it has something to do with my install being 10.4.6 and the install in the guide was an earlier version.

i didnt disable spotlight or dashboard as i couldnt remember how and it wouldnt free up much space anyway.
 
A while a go i had did it using Tiger, like you Richthomas, and it worked pretty nice, BUT ONLY ON THE SYSTEM (MacBook Pro) ON WHICH IT WAS CREATED!

Cause when i tried 2 other systems (MacBook & Mac Pro) it booted alright but the display was totally screwed.

But when i tried my External USB HD with an installed version of Leopard (created on a Mac Mini) i had NO PROBLEMS what so ever when i connected t and booted from different systems (Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro & Mac Mini)

So that's why i think that it would be great if we could create a Minimal Leopard System (preferable on a 4GB Pendrive)
 
Essentials.pkg, BaseSystem.pkg

The Leopard Installation disk contains hidden files, among them Essentials.pkg and BaseSystem.pkg. (Post #9 says otherwise, but I am looking at those packages on my screen right now.)

To see hidden files, use the Terminal. Enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

Then insert Leopard Disk 1 and look in the folder named "System." The aforementioned packages are found in System>Installation>Packages.

Many of the other packages there look unnecessary. Maybe installing them one by one, eliminating the nonessentials, would produce a lite Leopard.

I'm just trying to restore my system fonts, that's how I found this discussion.
 
dead links

anyone have updated links for the USB install? Both links in this post are dead.

thanks
 
For those who needs to pack minial OSX 10.5 onto a USB Flash Drive, here are my steps.

Requirements: Min 8GB Flash, I have the Install Disk 10.5.2

1) Format the disk with GUID/Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

2) Enable "Ownership" from Finder > Sharing & Permissions

3) Install the following packages from the the Install DVD (/System/Installation/Packages)

+ BaseSystem
+ Essentials
+ BSD
+ iPod Support (required by SystemUI Server)
+ Additional Essentials
+ OSUpgrade
+ Migration Assistant (Contains Setup Assistant)
+ iCal (CalendarStore required by Finder)
+ ACL (optional)
+ OSInstall

4) execute the following command from terminal:
sudo bless -verbose -folder /Volumes/DiskName/System/Library/CoreServices -bootinfo -bootefi
(Substitute your own DiskName)

5) Restart (Update Boot Cache). Either from Startup Disk Pref or holding down option key during restart.

After manual install, 4.36GB used on flash drive, leaving plenty space for swapfile .

EDIT:

Just applied 10.5.6 updater, removed all the unused apps added by the updater, but kept Safari 3.2.1. Space used has now gone to up 5GB.

Ran Monolingual and removed sleep image (also permanently disabled hibernate by executing "sudo pmset hibernatemode 0"). Space used now down to 4.80GB.
 
Leopard Minimal Install

dchao, I tried using your list of packages but I could not find "ACL," where is this? Apparently I do need it because without it the computer restarts over and over when trying to boot from USB. Any tip would be appreciated, thanks.

UPDATED: I've found the package, when I wrote the above I was using a retail Leopard install disk (a mistake) instead of the specific one that came with my Late 2008 Macbook. Needless to say, it didn't work.
 
sponson said:
dchao, I tried using your list of packages but I could not find "ACL," where is this? Apparently I do need it because without it the computer restarts over and over when trying to boot from USB. Any tip would be appreciated, thanks.
Click to expand...

You don't need ACL. It's put there to fix an ACL bugs on an earlier build of OS X.

May be you need to repair permissions.

There should be a log file "system.log" in /var/log. It will tell you what went wrong during the boot up process.
 
1. Install OSX from the installation disk, install whatever bundle packages you want

2. Install your own "base" software and whatever you like (Firefox, Adium, etc.)

3. Configure settings to the way you like them

4. Run Onyx for scripts, disk permission fixing, cache cleaning, etc.

5. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a .dmg of your entire HDD

Now you have a "clean-install image" that you can use to reinstall from. No more having to reconfigure things, no more having to wait for installation.
 
richthomas said:
sure will! but not straight away as i need to create a partition on my external drive as i only have a 1 GB flash drive.



in Leopard BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg are now com.apple.pkg.BaseSystem.bom and com.apple.pkg.Essentials.bom in /Library/Receipts/boms.
Click to expand...

Double Cheers. Thank You VERY much. :apple:
 
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