September 5, 2012
My computer went belly-up after the previous session. Not that I've wrecked the OS in any form, it appears to be a 'mechanical' problem. More precisely an 'electronical' problem: either memory has gone walkabout or the processor has caved in. A pity as I was on the brink of yet another 'diet for the OS' course...
Yes, there is still some bytes left to be shaved off the OS's footprint ;-)!
August 26, 2012
Today I took the plunge and moved the contents of my 3rd parties partition over to a partition of increased size as the old one got a bit tight. The partiton in question, 'ExtSYS:', was of 515Mb size and has grown by 50% to become 773Mb. This provided me with ample room for a couple of OS-components I deem 3rd-parties.
Things I moved over are:
Utilities/AmiPDF (10.8Mb)
Utilities/AmiGS (1.1Mb)
Utilities/GhostScript (28.7Mb)
For the latter it also included modifying 'SYS:S/Startup-Sequence' to remove the assign-command.
Furthermore I moved System/Python over freeing another 23 or so Mb.
I also moved Emulation and part of the Documentation. The latter I modified quite severely.
Stuff related to AHI, AmiSSL, MUI, Python, XPK and MiniGL were moved over, whereas stuff related to IDE/it..., IDE/sii... and rtl8... were simply deleted.
Volume 'OS_4.1_5:' now takes up only some 90Mb, where I initially provided it with a 154Mb partition.
The changes applied to 'OS_4.1_5:' I have also applied to volume 'OS_4.1_4:', which shrank accordingly to 91Mb, whilst occupying a 256Mb partition. Next in line for a simmilar WeightWatchers' Treatment is of cource volume 'OS_4.1_3:', which takes up a hefty 410Mb! If that one can be reduced to some 90Mb like the other two, then I gain another 320Mb. All in all it would return me some 550Mb shrinking these three OS-versions! Currently I have these partitions installed:
Addendum:
Some minor tweaks at the eleventh hour brought the size down to 89.5Mb for 'OS_4.1_5:' and to 90.4Mb for 'OS_4.1_4:'. The most important being the moving over of minigl.library as I concluded that one to be a 3rd-parties component. This one shaved another 1Mb of the OS's footprint. I don't think it worthwile investigating for further surgery or liposuction applied to OS.
Maybe volume 'OS_4.1_2:' can be reduced to some 90Mb as well. The remaining 2 OS-partitions may not be so susceptible to the treatment as they are actually the very basis to the system, especially 'OS_4.1_1:', which was a major update. Maybe I delete 'OS_4.1:' entirely, freeing up 128Mb. All these actions combined might save me the already mentioned 550Mb + 144Mb for 'OS_4.1_2:' and 128Mb for 'OS_4.1:', tallying to more then 820Mb.
I'll let you know...
August 16, 2012
An update for OS_4.1 is made available for every platform: update 5.
For me the installation of an update falls apart in two pieces, the first being the update to 'BootPartition', where the kickstart-things reside and the second being the creation and copying to of a partition of the more usual layout. The first piece is the easy one. In 'BootPartition:Kickstart' a drawer is created called 'OS_4.1_5'. An icon for this drawer I deem waste of space.
To this new drawer I copied a selection of files over from 'Files-NoArch/Kickstart' followed suite by copying over a selection of files fom 'Files-AmigaOne', as from the latter I do not require all of them to be present. Files I did NOT copy over are 'it812ide.device.kmod' and all them 'sii...device.kmod'-files: I have no such extensions to my µ. The only PCI-slot available is occupied by a Tekram SCSI-card, so the new 'lsi53c8xx.device.kmod' was positively copied over.
A little more tricky was the modification of the KickLayout. Having a fully multiboot capable setup, the KickLayout reflects this with multiple entries for the 'LABEL'-clause. Using 'Copy & Paste' I duplicated the part for OS_4.1_4 to the very end of the file and modified both the 'LABEL'-clause to show the proper label in the bootmenu and the appropriate 'MODULE'-clauses to reflect the loading of the updated components. The configuration now looks like this:
A 'MODULE'-clause tells the loader where to look for the particular component. It proved far less difficult then anticipated. In my handwritten update log I had made a special point in capitals: REMEMBER TO ADD A FILE "Bootdevice" TO OS_4.1_5 !! I'll come to this later.
The second part proved to be quite more involving. Essentially it bore down to creating and filling a (small: 154.7Mb) partition, make it bootable with a priority of 0, set the filesystem to SFS\00, blocksize to 512, buffers to 600, Max Transfer to 'FFFFFF' and finally the Mask to 'FFFFFFFE'. Save and reboot. Quick format the new partition, setting its name to 'OS_4.1_5' and unchecking the trashcan checkbox. As a final touch the partition's icon was snapshotted at a proper partition: X=30, Y=540. Sofar the creation.
The filling part of the exercise consisted of a): copying complete drawers over one by one from the current installation, 'OS_4.1_4', followed by b): copying over c.q. replacing files from 'Files-NoArch' and 'Files-AmigaOne' respectively, taking into acount that some files would not be applicable and so needless to be copied over, like 'Files-NoArch/Devs/catweasel#?.device'.
This proved the most tedious and timeconsuming job. The copied-over Startup-Sequence was updated to reflect some entries in the new version. My S-S is a far cry from the original one.
Compare this with an unmodified one and my claim will show true.
There was something I still had to do. Ah, yes it was about that "BootDevice"-file. The new partition bore the exec designation of 'DH9', so this is what I placed in said file and saved it.
I rebooted, taking care to select the proper label at the end of the menu and hit 'Enter'. Lo' and behold! the OS in its guise of latest update was presented to me!
The final touch was the modification of 'KickLayout' by utilising 'Copy & Paste' once more and moving the entries for Update 5 to first position so that on next boot it would be the default.
Juli 29, 2012
Decreased the size of the OS by deleting a lot of superfluous stuff:
-- SYS:Prefs/Presets/Default (±28Mb)
-- SYS:Prefs/Presets/Patterns (±5.2Mb)
-- SYS:Locale/Catalogs (±6.0Mb)
-- SYS:Locale/Flags/KeyMaps (±45.0Kb)
-- SYS:Locale/Flags/Countries (±101.0Kb)
-- SYS:Locale/Help (±500Kb)
From these drawers you can retain only what is neccessary. TThe rest can be sent to NIL:
The files that have been moved over as being deemed '3rd party' or 'multiboot related':
-- SYS:Devs/Networks (±585Kb)
-- SYS:Devs/AHI (±362Kb)
-- SYS:Devs/AudioModes (±8.5Kb)
-- Dockies
-- ScreenBlankerEngine (SYS:Utilities/Commodities) 95Kb
Blankers (SYS:Utilities) 617Kb
ScreenBlanker (SYS:Prefs) 208Kb
AHI, comprising these components:
ahi.device (SYS:Devs) 144Kb
SYS:Devs/AHI 362Kb
SYS:Devs/AudioModes 8.5Kb
-- SYS:Emulation 2.6Mb
-- XPK:
xpkmaster.library (SYS:Libs) 44.Kb
xpk-Compressors (SYS:Libs/Compressors) 316Kb
-- XAD:
xadmasterlibrary (SYS:Libs) 351Kb
xad-plugins (SYS:Libs/xad) 138.Kb
-- AmiSSL.library (SYS:Libs/AmiSSL) 1.9Mb
-- AmiSSL (SYS:Devs) 155Kb
My definition of '3rd parties' in the context of the OS is all contributions, which are developed and maintained separately from the OS. Often their version numbering is fully out of sync with the OS proper.
The OS now takes only 178.5Mb over 5117 files in 295 directories.
July 12, 2012
In my ongoing quest for shrinking the OS's footprint, I today decided to go through the SYS:-partition once more. Rather a long time I had a nagging idea to save some more diskspace by moving all 3rd parties components over to a separate partition. As you may know, I maintain a very strict policy concerning the boot partition. Any bootpartition, that is, as I have the opportunity to boot into any version of the OS, starting from OS4.1 all the way up to update 4. Not that I make much use of this facility, it is just part of the fun.
Anyway, you may not have realised that there is a huge 3rd parties component sitting in your OS' partition, a component which is not subject to any changes of the OS, as it is there for legacy purposes: MUI. This component, as installed, takes up some 9.5 Mb, which I think is quite considerable, given the overall size of the partition of 257Mb with 38Mb to spare. Give or take a few Mb's, the OS takes up some 220Mb. TOOK up some 220 Mb, which is now decreased by 9.5Mb due to moving MUI elsewhere. That is still about 4.3%.
But MUI is used by a variety of applications and is therefore indispensable, but is it neccessary to have 5 copies of MUI occupying precious diskspace? Me thinks not, so I moved one over and removed the other 4, thereby freeing nearly 40Mb of diskspace. It now resides on a volume called 'ExtSYS:', which can be read as 'Extended SYS:', providing room for all those 3rd parties stuff normally littering a bootpartition. I want to keep my bootpartitions clean! Clean as a whistle.
'ExtSYS:' sports a division into catagories mimicking any bootpartition, with drawers called 'Fonts', 'Devs', 'Libs', 'Objs', etc., etc. There is now a new drawer to be found, called MUI. This is the drawer where all iterations of the OS find the MUI-components. Updating does now no longer require me to unlock the bootpartition and this makes me feel much better.
Copied the entry for MUI in User-Startup to 'ExtSYS:S/ExtSYS-StartUp' and as that was the only entry in User-Startup I could modify Startup-Sequence to jump straight into 'ExtSYS:S/ExtSYS-StartUp'. This should decrease my boot time a very little bit as well.
I wonder how much space I would win by removing all those catalogs from the bootpartiton. You know, those catalogs for languages I'll probly never be able to master. The drawer takes up nearly 7Mb and as there are 5 copies of them littering my disk, I could save nearly 28Mb here. Tempting...
Comments
Submitted by stephenix1015 (not verified) on
This can be overcome by retrieving the system font for drawers as selected in the font preferences editor. -Missed Fortune
Submitted by AndrewNorman (not verified) on
Presently I can't talk from power or experience, yet as I would see it, I know you can utilize a PC at first reinforcement, Shrink, install and reestablish your OS. I think once it is on your phone that you can utilize you, Mac, to back it up later on. The trap for you is getting the Shrink OS. Essay Help | Essay Empire