I responded to a post in the Dell poweredge mailing list earlier today. My answer was off the top of my head, with a bit of experimentation. The content may be useful in the Cenyos context as well to admin's looking to strip the size of an install to the bare bones.
Comment welcomed. Can anyone see any packages which I have missed?
-- Russ Herrold
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:29:12 -0500 (EST) From: R P Herrold herrold@owlriver.com To: linux-poweredge@dell.com Subject: Re: dell-lnx-pe] Re: Stripping RHEL 3.0?
At 07:58 PM 1/14/2005 -0500, David Hubbard wrote:
Does anyone know of a good guide for stripping down RHEL 3.0?
<snip>
Due to all the dependencies I can't find a way to actually strip RHEL in a way that leaves everything happy.
Great timing and a good question -- I was just building such a host. I'll test for a bit to minimize size. Kickstart and anaconda are your friends. Here is a quick guide:
During each install, a file called 'ks.cfg' is left by anaconda in /root/ At the end of this post, I include the ks.cfg file which will build a stripped host. I have done a couple test installs, and gone through the resulting packagelist using;
rpm -qa --qf '%{size} %{name} \n' | sort -n | less
to see what I could add with the '-' prefix at the bottom of the file.
(I have left in there a couple 'conveneince packages' and I usually add one extravagance -- I prefer 'konsole' to pop back as a remote terminal and so pay its space penalty, but comment it out here)
As I said, I 'went hunting' and trimmed it down to 465 M ; more savings are possible. The worst remaining mandatory 'size offenders' in the install are: glibc-common 42M perl 27M kernel 22M Not much more we can do there.
But ... Once the install is done, turn off auditting: chkconfig audit off service audit stop and reclaim the LARGE (100M) amout of room these files eat up cd /var/log/audit.d/ rm -f * Unfortunately the package is not deletable as there are dependency issues.
As I say. I then end up at: 465M
Using a network install from a local mirror and a ks.cf file permits 'gameing' to see what changed in the ks.cfg result in a given size profile. See my notes at:
http://www.owlriver.com/tips/pxe-install/
for more information on setting up and debugging such an environment. It permits experimentation with fast test installs (under ten minutes per test shot, even on a low RAM host (64M)) to 'tune' for a desired result.
-- Russ Herrold
[root@ftp kickstart]# cat ks.cfg-Centos_34 # # Centos 34 server - built to be tiny as possible # install lang en_US.UTF-8 langsupport --default en_US.UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8 keyboard us mouse genericwheelps/2 --device psaux url --url ftp://10.16.33.105/pub/install/ftpinstall # xconfig --card "RIVA128" --videoram 4096 --hsync 31.5-35.1 --vsync 50-61 --resolution 1280x800 --depth 24 skipx network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp # rootpw --iscrypted <elided> firewall --disabled # not yet in RHEL 3 # selinux --disabled authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5 timezone America/New_York bootloader --location=mbr # --append hdb=ide-scsi # The following is the partition information you requested # Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed # here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is # not guaranteed to work clearpart --all --drives=hda part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=100 --ondisk=hda part / --fstype ext3 --size=1024 --grow --ondisk=hda part /var/spool --fstype ext3 --size=1024 --grow --ondisk=hda part /var/cache --fstype ext3 --size=1024 --grow --ondisk=hda part /var/log --fstype ext3 --size=1024 --grow --ondisk=hda part swap --size=128 --grow --maxsize=256 --ondisk=hda
# basically a unconfigured server - the new 2005 Centurion %packages kernel elinks grub joe lftp lynx rdate rpm-build rsync yum # kdebase -apmd -autofs -centos-yumcache -comps -cups -cups-libs -eal3-certification -eal3-certification-doc -finger -freetype -ipsec-tools -iptables -iptables-ipv6 -irda-utils -iscsi-initiator-utils -isdn4k-utils -krb5-libs -krb5-workstation -krbafs-utils -kernel-pcmcia-cs -libwvstreams -mdadm -mgetty -mtr -nano -nfs-utils -pam_krb5 -pam_smb -parted -portmap -raidtools -redhat-config-network-tui -redhat-config-securitylevel-tui -redhat-logos -redhat-menues -redhat-lsb -rpmdb-redhat -stunnel -sysreport -talk -tftp -specspo -vconfig -wireless-tools -wvdial -xinetd -ypbind -yp-tools
# If you use yum, you do not need: -up2date -up2date-update
%post [root@ftp kickstart]#