creating a minimal install?

[cudaboy_71]

im sure this has been covered before..either in the forums or in the main hints area.

but, how do i go about creating a minimal install of 10.2?

i have a little 5gb firefly drive i use for shuttling work back and forth between my two offices. i have 10.2 installed on it now as an emergency boot drive. but, the install takes up 2gb...i'd like to get it pared down enough just to be able to boot an ailing computer and make repairs.

anyone got any active links or advice?

thanks.

[aogail]

When you run the OS X installer, hit the Customize button when one appears. It'll be right before the actual installation takes place. Disable all languages you don't need; disable Asian fonts if you don't need them; disable all printer drivers (you can download ones specific to your printer only from the vendor); disable the BSD subsystem if you aren't going to work with it; and disable the installation of extra applications. The installation should take up about a gig of space.

I may be forgetting something, as I don't have the installer open in front of me. Essentially, disable anything that looks like you won't need it.

[cudaboy_71]

muchas gracias.

that sounds like the easiest solution. so, i guess there's no simple way to cherry pick out what i dont need out of the current install?

[xchanyazy]

You can run something like delocalizer (look on macupdate.com). That will get rid of all extra languages on your machine. You can get rid of the printer files in /Library/Printers, and fonts (careful, don't delete fonts you need) in /Library/Fonts (don't delete anything from /System)

If you don't want the documentation for your programs, you can toss the /Library/Documentation directory, the iMovie one in particular is pretty big. On that note, take a look through the applications installed - you probably won't need imovie, itunes, etc. on an emergency backup disk. I think about a gig is what you'll be able to get it down too.

EDIT: Ok, I've been playing around with OmniDiskSweeper (the perfect tool for this game) and have my boot partition down to 990 MB in size - this is with all the apple app's that come with the computer (except earthlink support) still installed.

I could cut another 200 MB or so, if I were going for a minimal install - all applications except web browser, text edit, and some utilities (in /Applications), get rid of emacs (in /usr/share), get rid of extra desktop pictures, all printer files, receipts, documentation (in /Library). I wouldn't recommend it on a normal system, but it should be fine for a backup.

Naturally, testing would be in order.

[tlarkin]

If its OS 10.2 or greater you can do the minimal install mentioned above. you can deselect all the language support and native driver support. If you have a 2 disk set of OS 10.2, it is my understanding that the second disk is just extras, like native driver support and extra installers. If you disable the BSD subsystem though, there will be some network aspects of OS X you will not be able to use.

[gatorparrots]

A lot of "fat" can be trimmed post-installation. See the relevant portion of Mike Bombich's page on creating an install that will fit on a CD. (Look under the section Setup your System on the test disk for more on what can be safely removed):
http://www.bombich.com/mactips/bootx.html

[gatorparrots]

55MB can be saved by removing emacs.
16MB can be saved by removing python.
...
Well, you get the idea.