ubuntu-server install takes up too much space

Default Ubuntu Server amd64 install - no tasks - 938MB
After 'sudo apt-get clean' to remove any updated packages from the cache: 869MB

That's curious, because pkgsel runs 'apt-get clean'. I suspect the rest is grub-installer and suchlike.

However, this probably doesn't matter in practice because the high-water mark is surely before the apt-get clean.

Agreed - I'm really just info collecting at this point in time

Interestingly the 'Minimal Install' option (not 'Minimal Virtual Install') resulted in an install of the same size.

Actually scrub that - my ISO is way old.

OK - so to summarize amd64 'default' install + options pre/post apt-get clean:

Standard Install - No Tasks: 928MB/875MB
Minimal Install - No Tasks: 876MB/806MB
Minimal Virtual Install - No Tasks: 644MB/575MB

I had set some installs running last night before going to sleep to get some more numbers, but you beat me to it. Here's one more:
i386, all tasks selected from the install screen (except manual package selection of course): 1517M/1475M

This is a bit of a moving target, but looking at the branch that was recently proposed for this, it looks like the new minimums set for minimal requirements are:
default (no additional tasks selected): 700 MB (N.B. if doing an install on a system with the minimal memory config also, this could be too low because swapspace will be needed)
All tasks selected: 1.4G

Currently, with the 20121015.2 image, I'm seeing the following on amd64:
No extra tasks selected (default): 1.1G
 - After apt-get clean: 986M
All tasks selected: 1.7G
 - After apt-get clean: 1.6G

So I think our numbers here are still on the low side unless I misread (I lack context in the patch to tell for sure so I'm just comparing against text of current serverguide)

Paul

The figures where based on amd64 figures as follows:

Standard Install - No Tasks: 928MB/875MB
Minimal Virtual Install - No Tasks: 644MB/575MB

To use the lower set of requirements you must select 'Minimal Virtual' install from the first ISO menu that appears.

I see, so I tried minimal virtual on amd64 and got:
759M / 691M

Not trying to be overly picky about this, but I had a test I was trying to make to watch and make sure that we don't start growing way bigger than we say our minimum requirements are without getting noticed. So I'm trying to sort out where I should really set that mark.

I believe this is fixed for the serverguide for 12.10: https://help.ubuntu.com/12.10/serverguide/preparing-to-install.html