Emdebian Grip packages

A smaller Debian-compatible distro

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Emdebian Grip 2.0 (based on Debian 6.0.7 "squeeze") - oldstable
Emdebian Wheezy Grip 3.0 (based on Debian 7.0 "wheezy") - stable
- Installation
- Release status

The apt sources for Emdebian Wheezy Grip 3.0 are:

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip wheezy-grip main
deb-src http://www.emdebian.org/grip wheezy-grip main

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip wheezy-grip main
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip wheezy-grip main

deb http://emdebian.bytesatwork.ch/mirror/grip wheezy-grip main
deb-src http://emdebian.bytesatwork.ch/mirror/grip wheezy-grip main


deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip stable-grip main
deb-src http://www.emdebian.org/grip stable-grip main

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip stable-grip main
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip stable-grip main

deb http://emdebian.bytesatwork.ch/mirror/grip stable-grip main
deb-src http://emdebian.bytesatwork.ch/mirror/grip stable-grip main

Please use one of the two mirrors wherever practical.

Grip is a light grip on Debian Squeeze (the codename of the Debian 6.0 release). Small amounts of squeeze, no functional changes and the highest level of functional compatibility with Debian Squeeze and subsequent releases. Includes support for building custom packages on an Emdebian installation as well as the ability to mix and match Emdebian and Debian packages with minimal effort.

Emdebian Grip 3.0 is the current stable release based on Debian 7.0 "wheezy".

Gradually, more packages are added but there will be a limit to the total package set (some packages just don't make sense on devices that would run Emdebian Grip). To suggest a particular set of packages, please send the output of:

$ dpkg --get-selections

to the debian-embedded mailing list.

Size comparisons

A basic multistrap of Emdebian Grip (sid-grip) comes out at 56Mb installed, not compressed - this includes apt but not much else.

A basic multistrap of Debian (sid) comes out at 90Mb installed, not compressed - same package list as Emdebian.

A basic debootstrap of Debian (sid) comes out at 269Mb installed, not compressed. There are a number reasons for this:

All downloaded packages remain inside the chroot when using debootstrap. Using apt-get clean reduces the size of the chroot to 208Mb.
More packages are installed - 136 using debootstrap compared to 80 using multistrap. Adding the majority of those packages increases the Emdebian chroot to 121Mb.
Upgrading a Debian debootstrap chroot to Emdebian Grip generally frees up over 40Mb during the upgrade, reducing the 208Mb to 160Mb after running apt-get clean.

To see the size of a prospective system, use multistrap on your desktop (for the desktop architecture) and list some of the top level packages in the multistrap file. Then you can chroot into the system and see if everything you wanted is installed, then tweak the package list, before getting an accurate size. Remember to run apt-get clean after installing new packages.

Integration into Debian

Integration details and mechanism.

The suites need to change when integrated into Debian and this has implications for users of Emdebian Grip unstable (sid). From 1st October 2011, unstable has been replaced by unstable-grip.

Announcement of the change from unstable to unstable-grip. See also the recent Grip status update.

The apt sources entries for unstable-grip are:

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip unstable-grip main

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip sid-grip main

The old unstable, wheezy, testing, stable and sid no longer operate and because the underlying Release files have been changed to the new names, symbolic links will not work either.

Wheezy (stable) has also been removed - the stable release of Emdebian Wheezy Grip is wheezy-grip (stable-grip). Automatic updates go into sid-grip and manual updates into jessie-grip. There are packages available as a snapshot of jessie-grip:

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip testing-grip main

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip jessie-grip main

Components

Component handling as used in Emdebian Grip 2.0 Squeeze has been dropped in Emdebian Wheezy Grip 3.0 - all packages are now in main.

See the wiki for details of the integration of Emdebian into Debian.

Mirrors

Emdebian supports standard Debian push mirror tools. Grip is currently mirrored onto:

http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip - available as an apt source:

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip wheezy-grip main
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip wheezy-grip main

http://emdebian.bytesatwork.ch/mirror/grip/ - available as an apt source:

deb http://emdebian.bytesatwork.ch/mirror/grip wheezy-grip main
deb-src http://emdebian.bytesatwork.ch/mirror/grip wheezy-grip main

Both of the above mirrors provide packages for Emdebian Crush, Emdebian Grip Ports and the Toolchains.

Other debian.org mirrors can also choose to mirror Emdebian code, just ask to be added to the push on the debian-embedded@lists.debian.org.

The complete Grip archive is mirrored in one push - Squeeze, Wheezy, Jessie and Sid for all supported architectures.

In time, proof-of-concept variants like Crush and Baked will be added to the mirror push.

Methods

Emdebian Grip unpacks .deb archives from Debian using standard Debian tools, removes relevant files and repacks the archive. The effect is to retain the unchanged binaries and maintainer scripts of the original Debian package but reduce the overall size of the package, the package meta-data and final installation size of the package.
Emdebian Grip processes any .deb from any architecture on any architecture. This allows one machine to generate Emdebian Grip packages for multiple architectures. Emdebian Grip 2.0 supports:
```
armel, i386, amd64, powerpc, mips, mipsel, source.
```
Emdebian Grip supports standard Debian methods for creating root filesystems, chroots and even normal Debian installations using the Debian Installer See Preseeding Grip for details.
The preferred way to install Emdebian Grip is multistrap.

Back to the Emdebian Project homepage.