[BUGS] Really small distro

[Andrew Reilly]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 12:15:39PM +1100, Joshua Bromfield wrote:
> I am looking to run a small web server in a VM on my desktop here at work.

As a rough guess, you want to do this because your desktop is
Windows, and you don't trust the windows-native web servers,
or they don't do what you want in some way?  As Edwin says,
if you're already running FreeBSD, then jails are a very good
simulation.  Personally, an ordinary Unix process is a good
enough model for a virtual machine for my purposes: that's what
operating systems are for!

> I
> dont want anything like GUI or any other novelties for that matter, it just
> has to be terminal & capable of running apache or lighttpd.
> 
> Are you guys aware of any small distributions I can install without all the
> garbage that goes with it?
> 
> In my searches on Google I have found Damn Small Linux (DSL), it looks like
> its ok, but I figured I'd ask you first.

If you really want a small OS in a VM, then you can get
arbitrarily close with FreeBSD, particularly if you build
something out of nanoBSD (PJK's scripts for building
stripped-down versions of FreeBSD for embedded servers of
various sorts: it's in ports/devel, from memory.)

On the other hand, if you're game, and don't insist on lighttpd
(but apache runs, and there are probably other options)
you'll have a tough time finding something unix-like that can do
IP networking that is smaller than Minix-3.  Good fun to play
with.  Odd, though.  Networking interfaces, in particular, are
very different, since they're not based on Berkely sockets.

Another option that you might want to consider, if you're set on
a "VM", there are a whole bunch of web servers in Java, which
run in that language's VM (see:
http://java-source.net/open-source/web-servers)

There are many ways to skin the web server cat.  You it might
want to explain some more details that affect your particuar
problem space.

Chees,

Andrew