small storage footprint linux vm for lab/testing which includes vmware tools?

[Thuleman]

Do any of you have a really small Linux VM you use for your lab or testing environment into whch you managed to install VMware Tools?

There are some tiny Linux distros around such as Damn Small Linux and TTY Linux but getting VMware Tools installed on those is a major nightmare if at all possible.

I am shooting for less than 500 MB disk space, less is better of course, and while some light weight GUI would be great it would be ok to not have it as long as there's some way to still measure disk i/o in a real-time way like iometer does on Windows.

There's a really old (2006) article on how to install VMware Tools on Puppy Linux and I'll test out in the coming day or so whether that still applies to the current version of Puppy Linux. Will report back.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

You can get a pretty small system easily using the Debian network installer. Just deselect what you don't need during the install. To pare it down further, remove some installed optional packages. I think this will get you below your goal.

You may also want to look into Arch or maybe (if you're feeling masochistic) Gentoo.

 

[Thuleman]

A base system Debian netinstall comes in at ~370 MB, but there's still a whole lot of stuff installed that's completely unnecessary (i.e. python, cups, exim, etc.)

I guess I could just let it go, install LXDE or XFCE on top of that netinstall and be done with it. That would probably still get me under 500, but it's sure nice to see those linux installs that are under 100 MB. Didn't have time to spend with Puppy Linux yet so no idea on VMware Tools on there.

 

[TCM]

http://tails.boum.org/ is a privacy-tailored LiveCD but has tools out-of-the-box.

 

[Thuleman]

Puppy Linux isn't a good choice, comes in at 556 MB base install.

May look into how to get VMware Tools installed on TTY Linux or how to made Debian smaller based on BlueLineSwinger's link.