Hi
Installed my first CentOS box last night after coming from Whitebox - This is perhaps me being stupid but on install i opted for 'Custom' install as i prefer minimal and then build as i suit. I went through the list of things to install and removed everything apart from networking. Install happenned and tons of stull ended up being installed including X openoffice and the like - Why was that when i de-selected everything apart from networking? It was very much bloatware and not what i want on a server.
thanks for any hints
Which version of CentOS (3.0, 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, etc.) were you using?
Can you provide /root/install.log and/or /root/anaconda-ks.cfg to verify which selections you made during install?
Are you certain this is different from RHEL behavior? I don't think it is, and I'm glad that CentOS isn't straying from their behavior.
Greg
Tom Brown wrote:
Hi
Installed my first CentOS box last night after coming from Whitebox - This is perhaps me being stupid but on install i opted for 'Custom' install as i prefer minimal and then build as i suit. I went through the list of things to install and removed everything apart from networking. Install happenned and tons of stull ended up being installed including X openoffice and the like - Why was that when i de-selected everything apart from networking? It was very much bloatware and not what i want on a server.
thanks for any hints _______________________________________________
First, this is RedHat's direction, not something specific to CentOS (just cloning you know).
This has been my complaint with RedHat products for some time now (about rh 7.3 or so). CentOS is simply following that system. One of the things that's really hard to get rid of are the graphical interfaces.... RH manage this... RH manage that, which seems to make X-fonts install, but I'm not sure if this is all. You can turn them off in one place and then find them in set to install in at least one other situation. Got to turn them off all over the place. An install of el4 versions seems to force X, whether you want it or not, in spite of unchecking X.
I hate to say it, but it reminds me of Winders! Bloatware... Yeah! More is better philosophy. I liked the rh 7.2 installation, where you selected your packages, it did a dependancies check, provided a list of what was going to be installed and the ability to go back and not install whatever it was that was forcing the other depends aps, or to accept those dependancies and go forward with the install. A great, although perhaps a bit techinical installation process. I suppose this is the price we pay for attempts at positioning the OS to the mainstream. It needs the more automated methods, but I'm still a bit upset that 'Custom Install' doesn't work like it used to and seems to get worse with each new release.
I'm not so bothered by disk space as I am by more ways for intrusion. It's just more crap to keep updated... and stuff that never gets used. I do subscribe to the school of thought that it is best to stay within the official RPMs and enjoy the beauties of yum or up2date. That has been pretty darned reliable and greatly simplifies administation over multiple machines. I really don't enjoy removing packages after the install as it's pretty easy to break something doing that as well (and I love these things that are broken that you don't find out about for 3 weeks, meanwhile... who knows what might be lost).
So, OK... yeah, you hit on one of my nerves with what RH has done... but I'll live with it, but my 'score' for their OS gets reduced on this front as well.
----- Score reductions for RH: (not to be confused with score reductions for CentOS. CentOS get A+++ on all fronts)
They weren't happy with my money for running up2date from their servers but wanted more, stating they were going to give me support time. I don't want support time, so I'm here. I wouldn't have minded more money, but not that much more!
RHEL should have an upgrade path from one version to the next. I can understand (barely) the lack of this ability from rh 9 to rhel, but from el3 to el4? Yeah, so maybe I'd need to fix 50 config files, but that's better than moving hundreds of hosting clients and the thousands of configs for them. I am certain doing this would be an extremely complex issue for RH.
Bloatware... and each release gets just a bit worse and is generally gui related. We don't want no stinkin' GUIs on servers!
A general degradation in the quality of updates. I had exactly one issue with updates from rh 5.2 through rh 7.2. I've lost count during my rhel time... still not a lot, but at least 3 or 4.
The ability to legally run a 'test' machine fully updated without cost went away. I used to 'buy' rh off the shelf. A bit more monetary support for rh and most came with a free subscription. I would run a 'test' machine with this subscription and feel more secure with going live with new updates to the real world machines or simply to use it as a 'learning tool' without breaking somebody's stuff. ------
Still not quite enough to make me jump over to Debian... not while CentOS is alive. But I think Debian has gained a lot of good people, translated into more knowledge/more time and efforts/better packages due to RedHat's change.
John Hinton
John Hinton wrote:
Tom Brown wrote:
Hi
Installed my first CentOS box last night after coming from Whitebox - This is perhaps me being stupid but on install i opted for 'Custom' install as i prefer minimal and then build as i suit. I went through the list of things to install and removed everything apart from networking. Install happenned and tons of stull ended up being installed including X openoffice and the like - Why was that when i de-selected everything apart from networking? It was very much bloatware and not what i want on a server.
thanks for any hints _______________________________________________
First, this is RedHat's direction, not something specific to CentOS (just cloning you know).
This has been my complaint with RedHat products for some time now (about rh 7.3 or so). CentOS is simply following that system. One of the things that's really hard to get rid of are the graphical interfaces.... RH manage this... RH manage that, which seems to make X-fonts install, but I'm not sure if this is all. You can turn them off in one place and then find them in set to install in at least one other situation. Got to turn them off all over the place. An install of el4 versions seems to force X, whether you want it or not, in spite of unchecking X.
I do a minimal install, then install the packages(httpd,mysql,php,etc)I need. Never ran across a problem with it installing X when I didn't want it.
Dan
I do a minimal install, then install the packages(httpd,mysql,php,etc)I need. Never ran across a problem with it installing X when I didn't want it.
OK just got to install another box but there is no 'minimal' option -
I have
Personal Desktop Workstation Server Custom
What ISO's do i need to download to be presented with a 'minimal' option ? Or is there a switch at boot or something similar?
thanks
Hi, for a minimal install I suggest you to choose the 'Server' way then uncheck all the install's options. The install will take ~730meg and requires the CD 1 & 3.
Manuel
Tom Brown wrote:
I do a minimal install, then install the packages(httpd,mysql,php,etc)I need. Never ran across a problem with it installing X when I didn't want it.
OK just got to install another box but there is no 'minimal' option -
I have
Personal Desktop Workstation Server Custom
What ISO's do i need to download to be presented with a 'minimal' option ? Or is there a switch at boot or something similar?
thanks _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 12:47 +0100, Tom Brown wrote:
I do a minimal install, then install the packages(httpd,mysql,php,etc)I need. Never ran across a problem with it installing X when I didn't want it.
OK just got to install another box but there is no 'minimal' option -
I have
Personal Desktop Workstation Server Custom
What ISO's do i need to download to be presented with a 'minimal' option ? Or is there a switch at boot or something similar?
Under the Custom selection, at the bottom, there is a minimum optoin in the GUI install.
It is the same as unselecting all the checkboxes (which you can do it Custom on a Text Install)
This will give you what the upstream provider has deemed a minimum install (plus yum added by CentOS for package management).
Under the Custom selection, at the bottom, there is a minimum optoin in the GUI install.
It is the same as unselecting all the checkboxes (which you can do it Custom on a Text Install)
This will give you what the upstream provider has deemed a minimum install (plus yum added by CentOS for package management).
hmm thats what i did first time around - Text install and unselect everything apart from 'network' and i ended up with X being installed!
Will try the server option and remove everything.
On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 13:49 +0100, Tom Brown wrote:
Under the Custom selection, at the bottom, there is a minimum optoin in the GUI install.
It is the same as unselecting all the checkboxes (which you can do it Custom on a Text Install)
This will give you what the upstream provider has deemed a minimum install (plus yum added by CentOS for package management).
hmm thats what i did first time around - Text install and unselect everything apart from 'network' and i ended up with X being installed!
Will try the server option and remove everything.
Network probably contains some kind of GUI (system-config- something_or_another) tools as a default. This would also install X.
You can look at individual packages by pressing whatever it says at the bottom of the screen to get there and select what under Network to turn off.
You will have a fully functional install, with a network, if you unselect everything.
On Thu, 2005-08-25 at 11:14 -0400, John Hinton wrote:
Tom Brown wrote:
Hi
Installed my first CentOS box last night after coming from Whitebox - This is perhaps me being stupid but on install i opted for 'Custom' install as i prefer minimal and then build as i suit. I went through the list of things to install and removed everything apart from networking. Install happenned and tons of stull ended up being installed including X openoffice and the like - Why was that when i de-selected everything apart from networking? It was very much bloatware and not what i want on a server.
thanks for any hints _______________________________________________
First, this is RedHat's direction, not something specific to CentOS (just cloning you know).
This has been my complaint with RedHat products for some time now (about rh 7.3 or so). CentOS is simply following that system. One of the things that's really hard to get rid of are the graphical interfaces.... RH manage this... RH manage that, which seems to make X-fonts install, but I'm not sure if this is all. You can turn them off in one place and then find them in set to install in at least one other situation. Got to turn them off all over the place. An install of el4 versions seems to force X, whether you want it or not, in spite of unchecking X.
I hate to say it, but it reminds me of Winders! Bloatware... Yeah! More is better philosophy. I liked the rh 7.2 installation, where you selected your packages, it did a dependancies check, provided a list of what was going to be installed and the ability to go back and not install whatever it was that was forcing the other depends aps, or to accept those dependancies and go forward with the install. A great, although perhaps a bit techinical installation process. I suppose this is the price we pay for attempts at positioning the OS to the mainstream. It needs the more automated methods, but I'm still a bit upset that 'Custom Install' doesn't work like it used to and seems to get worse with each new release.
I'm not so bothered by disk space as I am by more ways for intrusion. It's just more crap to keep updated... and stuff that never gets used. I do subscribe to the school of thought that it is best to stay within the official RPMs and enjoy the beauties of yum or up2date. That has been pretty darned reliable and greatly simplifies administation over multiple machines. I really don't enjoy removing packages after the install as it's pretty easy to break something doing that as well (and I love these things that are broken that you don't find out about for 3 weeks, meanwhile... who knows what might be lost).
So, OK... yeah, you hit on one of my nerves with what RH has done... but I'll live with it, but my 'score' for their OS gets reduced on this front as well.
Score reductions for RH: (not to be confused with score reductions for CentOS. CentOS get A+++ on all fronts)
They weren't happy with my money for running up2date from their servers but wanted more, stating they were going to give me support time. I don't want support time, so I'm here. I wouldn't have minded more money, but not that much more!
RHEL should have an upgrade path from one version to the next. I can understand (barely) the lack of this ability from rh 9 to rhel, but from el3 to el4? Yeah, so maybe I'd need to fix 50 config files, but that's better than moving hundreds of hosting clients and the thousands of configs for them. I am certain doing this would be an extremely complex issue for RH.
Bloatware... and each release gets just a bit worse and is generally gui related. We don't want no stinkin' GUIs on servers!
A general degradation in the quality of updates. I had exactly one issue with updates from rh 5.2 through rh 7.2. I've lost count during my rhel time... still not a lot, but at least 3 or 4.
The ability to legally run a 'test' machine fully updated without cost went away. I used to 'buy' rh off the shelf. A bit more monetary support for rh and most came with a free subscription. I would run a 'test' machine with this subscription and feel more secure with going live with new updates to the real world machines or simply to use it as a 'learning tool' without breaking somebody's stuff.
Still not quite enough to make me jump over to Debian... not while CentOS is alive. But I think Debian has gained a lot of good people, translated into more knowledge/more time and efforts/better packages due to RedHat's change.
---- John - you are rambling
RHEL 4 / CentOS 4 installs a very light package set (and no X) if you simply choose server. I think that there was mention of a special server CD iso for installing a super light set and that it was working with text install but not the GUI install. See the archives from a few weeks ago - something like Server CD. I didn't even know one had existed.
You do have to be careful when you add stuff because some things will cause a bunch of stuff to be installed as dependencies.
Craig
} } RHEL 4 / CentOS 4 installs a very light package set (and no X) if you } simply choose server. I think that there was mention of a special server } CD iso for installing a super light set and that it was working with } text install but not the GUI install. See the archives from a few weeks } ago - something like Server CD. I didn't even know one had existed. } } You do have to be careful when you add stuff because some things will } cause a bunch of stuff to be installed as dependencies. } } Craig
which brings up a good point for the developers...
how is that rocking CentOS 4 Server single CD project coming along?
regards,
- rh
-- Robert Hanson Abba Communications http://www.abbacomm.net
which brings up a good point for the developers...
how is that rocking CentOS 4 Server single CD project coming along?
that was sorta what i was looking for - a 'mini' iso type affair
to be honect i must have missed the 'minimal' install and gone for custom as i presumed, wrongly, that custom meant just that. Not digging at CentOS here just an observation.
thanks for the hint
} } that was sorta what i was looking for - a 'mini' iso type affair } } to be honect i must have missed the 'minimal' install and gone for custom } as i presumed, wrongly, that custom meant just that. Not digging at CentOS } here just an observation. } } thanks for the hint }
greetings!
ummmmm i still believe there is a CentOS 3.X single CD Server disk out there correct?
that is where i found out about all this "single CD" stuff along time ago on this list.
sorry i didnt check the mirrors to see if still there and what specific revision it is etc first, in a hurry. :)
regards,
- rh
-- Robert Hanson Abba Communications http://www.abbacomm.net
Robert Hanson wrote:
how is that rocking CentOS 4 Server single CD project coming along?
Coming along well, keep a lookout for sometime shortly.
- K
Craig White wrote:
John - you are rambling
Yeah, sort of hoping it might fall upon RedHat ears somewhere! I 'feel' better either way. ;)
RHEL 4 / CentOS 4 installs a very light package set (and no X) if you simply choose server. I think that there was mention of a special server CD iso for installing a super light set and that it was working with text install but not the GUI install. See the archives from a few weeks ago - something like Server CD. I didn't even know one had existed.
You do have to be careful when you add stuff because some things will cause a bunch of stuff to be installed as dependencies.
I'll give minimal a shot on a test machine. I normally start with server, but then fine tune. I use the package list as a 'checklist' to help me remember what I need and what I don't for any particular install. EL4 does seem to leave out a lot of server items (PHP, MySQL) which were installed in the past, while adding things that weren't. My last installs (el4) have all resulted in systems that defaulted to a startup of X at the console.
Aside from apache/bind/sendmail, I normally install php, mysql, imagemagick (without gui), netpbm, apache-devel, sar, top, mrtg, spamassassin, cyrus-imap and at the moment, I forget just what else (that checklist is useful!).
I don't know, I must be choosing something that's throwing the extra garbage in. And I know, I could write my own KS, but gee, I don't do it often enough for that and some machines vary, for instance some are nameservers some are not. A person can spend a lot of time in dependancy hell trying to get a clean install. If one does select minimal, are you presented with the custom option during install? Or is minimal only available at the bottom of the customization screen? Seems like figuring out what's missing might not be worth the effort to trim the fat? And maybe I'm crazy, but it seems that installing packages like bind during the intial install, configures itself more completely off the start versus installing the package later?
A great point was made..... Custom should be Custom and should allow minimal within that scope. Custom doesn't even seem to have nearly the full package list shown, although yes, it can be argued that some packages simply must be installed and therefore don't need to be shown. Then again, maybe one of my 'other' selections is throwing X into the game?
When CentOS finalizes their 'Server CD', perhaps a copy should be sent to RedHat!! LOL!
Again, I know this is not a 'CentOS' issue. And crap... here I go rambling again! Sorry.
John Hinton
John Hinton wrote:
Craig White wrote: I don't know, I must be choosing something that's throwing the extra garbage in. And I know, I could write my own KS, but gee, I don't do it often enough for that and some machines vary, for instance some are nameservers some are not. A person can spend a lot of time in dependancy hell trying to get a clean install. If one does select minimal, are you presented with the custom option during install? Or is minimal only available at the bottom of the customization screen? Seems like figuring out what's missing might not be worth the effort to trim the fat? And maybe I'm crazy, but it seems that installing packages like bind during the intial install, configures itself more completely off the start versus installing the package later?
A great point was made..... Custom should be Custom and should allow minimal within that scope. Custom doesn't even seem to have nearly the full package list shown, although yes, it can be argued that some packages simply must be installed and therefore don't need to be shown. Then again, maybe one of my 'other' selections is throwing X into the game?
When CentOS finalizes their 'Server CD', perhaps a copy should be sent to RedHat!! LOL!
Again, I know this is not a 'CentOS' issue. And crap... here I go rambling again! Sorry.
Just to throw in my $0.02: we do minimal installs with all our RHEL and CentOS boxes (both 3 and 4) and it really is minimal - no X, no GUI, no KDE/GNOME or Window Managers. If you're building a server then you know what should be on it so you can just do things like 'yum install httpd php mysql' or whatever to get yourself going. Its a very clean way of doing things.
Tim Edwards tim@registriesltd.com.au wrote:
Just to throw in my $0.02: we do minimal installs with all our RHEL and CentOS boxes (both 3 and 4) and it really is minimal - no X, no GUI, no KDE/GNOME or Window Managers.
It should also be noted that there are _excellent_ tools out there that take a RPM or other repository and tell you _exactly_ what packages render what inter-dependencies and, most importantly, the individual and total sizes result.
Most of these tools came from Red Hat's own employees when the move to Fedora Core 1 was made away from the Red Hat Linux 10 Beta.
If you're building a server then you know what should be on it so you can just do things like 'yum install httpd php mysql' or whatever to get yourself going. Its a very clean way of doing things.
Which is what a YUM-integrated Anaconda in Fedora Core 5+ (thus RHEL 5+) is all about.
A single cd server cd for centos 3, i think, was released in Linux format magazine sometime ago..this month a DVD for CentOS 4.1 has been released...so there ought to be a single disk ou there :)
On 25/08/05, Craig White craigwhite@azapple.com wrote:
On Thu, 2005-08-25 at 11:14 -0400, John Hinton wrote:
Tom Brown wrote:
Hi
Installed my first CentOS box last night after coming from Whitebox - This is perhaps me being stupid but on install i opted for 'Custom' install as i prefer minimal and then build as i suit. I went through the list of things to install and removed everything apart from networking. Install happenned and tons of stull ended up being installed including X openoffice and the like - Why was that when i de-selected everything apart from networking? It was very much bloatware and not what i want on a server.
thanks for any hints _______________________________________________
First, this is RedHat's direction, not something specific to CentOS (just cloning you know).
This has been my complaint with RedHat products for some time now (about rh 7.3 or so). CentOS is simply following that system. One of the things that's really hard to get rid of are the graphical interfaces.... RH manage this... RH manage that, which seems to make X-fonts install, but I'm not sure if this is all. You can turn them off in one place and then find them in set to install in at least one other situation. Got to turn them off all over the place. An install of el4 versions seems to force X, whether you want it or not, in spite of unchecking X.
I hate to say it, but it reminds me of Winders! Bloatware... Yeah! More is better philosophy. I liked the rh 7.2 installation, where you selected your packages, it did a dependancies check, provided a list of what was going to be installed and the ability to go back and not install whatever it was that was forcing the other depends aps, or to accept those dependancies and go forward with the install. A great, although perhaps a bit techinical installation process. I suppose this is the price we pay for attempts at positioning the OS to the mainstream. It needs the more automated methods, but I'm still a bit upset that 'Custom Install' doesn't work like it used to and seems to get worse with each new release.
I'm not so bothered by disk space as I am by more ways for intrusion. It's just more crap to keep updated... and stuff that never gets used. I do subscribe to the school of thought that it is best to stay within the official RPMs and enjoy the beauties of yum or up2date. That has been pretty darned reliable and greatly simplifies administation over multiple machines. I really don't enjoy removing packages after the install as it's pretty easy to break something doing that as well (and I love these things that are broken that you don't find out about for 3 weeks, meanwhile... who knows what might be lost).
So, OK... yeah, you hit on one of my nerves with what RH has done... but I'll live with it, but my 'score' for their OS gets reduced on this front as well.
Score reductions for RH: (not to be confused with score reductions for CentOS. CentOS get A+++ on all fronts)
They weren't happy with my money for running up2date from their servers but wanted more, stating they were going to give me support time. I don't want support time, so I'm here. I wouldn't have minded more money, but not that much more!
RHEL should have an upgrade path from one version to the next. I can understand (barely) the lack of this ability from rh 9 to rhel, but from el3 to el4? Yeah, so maybe I'd need to fix 50 config files, but that's better than moving hundreds of hosting clients and the thousands of configs for them. I am certain doing this would be an extremely complex issue for RH.
Bloatware... and each release gets just a bit worse and is generally gui related. We don't want no stinkin' GUIs on servers!
A general degradation in the quality of updates. I had exactly one issue with updates from rh 5.2 through rh 7.2. I've lost count during my rhel time... still not a lot, but at least 3 or 4.
The ability to legally run a 'test' machine fully updated without cost went away. I used to 'buy' rh off the shelf. A bit more monetary support for rh and most came with a free subscription. I would run a 'test' machine with this subscription and feel more secure with going live with new updates to the real world machines or simply to use it as a 'learning tool' without breaking somebody's stuff.
Still not quite enough to make me jump over to Debian... not while CentOS is alive. But I think Debian has gained a lot of good people, translated into more knowledge/more time and efforts/better packages due to RedHat's change.
John - you are rambling
RHEL 4 / CentOS 4 installs a very light package set (and no X) if you simply choose server. I think that there was mention of a special server CD iso for installing a super light set and that it was working with text install but not the GUI install. See the archives from a few weeks ago - something like Server CD. I didn't even know one had existed.
You do have to be careful when you add stuff because some things will cause a bunch of stuff to be installed as dependencies.
Craig
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
John Hinton webmaster@ew3d.com wrote:
First, this is RedHat's direction, not something specific to CentOS (just cloning you know).
Forward upgradability has always been a catch-22.
But I think the problem in this case is that the gentleman started with "Custom." And if he enabled enough networking services, he might have been touching enough GUI dependencies that caused the bloat. It's hard to avoid it, even in Debian (although Debian's guidelines tend to reduce a lot of the stupid inter-dependencies).
This has been my complaint with RedHat products for some time now (about rh 7.3 or so).
One of the things Fedora Core 1 did off-the-bat was remove a lot of the stupid inter-dependencies. No, it's nowhere near Debian in guidelines, but the Fedora developers have done a great job in doing so.
Now Fedora Extras is trying to address the bloat issue. There is a real movement first the first time to "debloat" Fedora Core as of version 5 or 6, and move everything else to Fedora Extras. I don't know how far this will go, but it's the first time people on Fedora Development have been serious about it.
How this will affect Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I don't know. I have to assume Red Hat will not change its forward compatibility, and it will still come with a lot of software.
Understand that anything Red Hat ships, they support with Service Level Agreements (SLA) as low as a 4 hour support time in standard contracts. So it's actually in their interest to keep bloat down. But because of the lineage, I seriously doubt this will change in the future. The package count will only get larger.
But also recognize what you _do_ get in RHEL/CentOS as standard. That's a lot more than other OSes for the same GBs.
-
Bryan J. Smith -
Craig White -
Daniel Wright -
Filianx -
Greg Knaddison -
John Hinton -
Johnny Hughes -
Karanbir Singh -
Manuel BERTRAND -
Robert Hanson -
Tim Edwards -
Tom Brown