On 07/20/2011 04:48 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
On 07/19/2011 05:36 PM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
Try the attached ks. It installs around 180 packages. libselinux-utils is in because I find it mandatory to be able to modify the selinux configuration of an existing system.
Thanks for the info. I created a VM with this config and it took up about 512MB of disk space, which is higher than the kickstart file that I posted (about 460MB).
you removed selinux and also used rpm -e --nodeps which I would never promote (even if I also use on occasions). ditch from my list the packages which install firmware and you'll end up at roughly the same size as yours. anyway my target was never minimal space on disk (today even CFs and SSD are several times larger than what the ks installs ) but minimal number of packages while still maintaining out of the box all the proper functionality ( or at least my vision on it), including for servers with real storage behind them ( brocade, etc ). and I emphasize again: including selinux tools.
I'm running x86_64 so I'll probably see different sizes than your system which appears to be i686.
my ks works on both, just adjust the repository used for install
In any event, thanks for taking the time to post your kickstart file. It helps me validate that what I have is reasonably minimal, that I'm probably not missing any major sources of size reductions.
welcome
For what it's worth here are a few more tools that I include due to fairly minimal impact, but are assumed by many 3rd party scripts for example:
rsync unzip wget
And personally I like these for local setup though they add a big more space: ntp elinks lsof nmap denyhosts yum-utils autofs nfs-utils nss_db nss-pam-ldapd nss-tools openldap-clients pam_ldap
On 07/21/2011 02:36 AM, JDF. Franklin wrote:
For what it's worth here are a few more tools that I include due to fairly minimal impact, but are assumed by many 3rd party scripts for example:
rsync unzip wget
And personally I like these for local setup though they add a big more space: ntp elinks lsof nmap denyhosts yum-utils autofs nfs-utils nss_db nss-pam-ldapd nss-tools openldap-clients pam_ldap
Thank you for your suggestions. I want to keep the minimal image really minimal so I am not going to add to it anything but hardware drivers. On the other hand, I will keep your list handy and adjust accordingly (if space allows ) the content of the Light Weight Server CD ( which is still under work)
For what is worth, my minimal kickstart is now available as ks-minimalC6 at https://nazar.karan.org/cgit/bluecain/tree/
manuel
On 07/20/2011 09:59 PM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
For what is worth, my minimal kickstart is now available as ks-minimalC6 at https://nazar.karan.org/cgit/bluecain/tree/
This is a nice collection of kickstart files!! Is there any way we could get a link to bluecain added on the CentOS Wiki:
http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart
Does anyone on this list have write access to that Wiki page? Since it's the #1 google search result for "centos kickstart", it'd be ideal to have it linked from there.
-Kartik
On 07/21/2011 04:35 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
On 07/20/2011 09:59 PM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
For what is worth, my minimal kickstart is now available as ks-minimalC6 at https://nazar.karan.org/cgit/bluecain/tree/
This is a nice collection of kickstart files!! Is there any way we could get a link to bluecain added on the CentOS Wiki:
http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart
Does anyone on this list have write access to that Wiki page? Since it's the #1 google search result for "centos kickstart", it'd be ideal to have it linked from there.
Enjoy.
Manuel
On 07/21/2011 09:51 AM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart
Does anyone on this list have write access to that Wiki page? Since it's the #1 google search result for "centos kickstart", it'd be ideal to have it linked from there.
Enjoy.
Thanks Manuel, I'm sure this will be of help to many folks!!
One suggestion -- when I deployed the ks-minimalC6.cfg, there were still some -firmware packages that got installed and were not removed by the kickstart process. I noticed that you explicitly remove various firmware packages by name with the '-' notation. Another approach would be to remove them all programmatically in a %post section, like this:
%post rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i \-firmware | grep -v kernel-firmware)
That way, you don't have to specify each one by hand, and have to keep track of them if a new one shows up in a future release. It also makes the kickstart file smaller. It's unlikely that an RPM that matches "-firmware" is going to be relevant to a VM, so it seems like a fairly safe approach. Just a suggestion.
-Kartik
On 07/22/2011 07:01 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
On 07/21/2011 09:51 AM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart
Does anyone on this list have write access to that Wiki page? Since it's the #1 google search result for "centos kickstart", it'd be ideal to have it linked from there.
Enjoy.
Thanks Manuel, I'm sure this will be of help to many folks!!
One suggestion -- when I deployed the ks-minimalC6.cfg, there were still some -firmware packages that got installed and were not removed by the kickstart process. I noticed that you explicitly remove various firmware packages by name with the '-' notation. Another approach would be to remove them all programmatically in a %post section, like this:
%post rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i \-firmware | grep -v kernel-firmware)
That way, you don't have to specify each one by hand, and have to keep track of them if a new one shows up in a future release. It also makes the kickstart file smaller. It's unlikely that an RPM that matches "-firmware" is going to be relevant to a VM, so it seems like a fairly safe approach. Just a suggestion.
The kickstart is intended to create images which can also run on real iron, including those with "real" storage ( brocade, qlogic etc ). Therefore the firmware is left there on purpose. As of removing the firmware in %post: yes, it is one way to do it. But I find it awkward to install something just to remove it seconds later. As of ks file size: who cares ? You create it once and use it as many times as needed. An extra dozen or hundreds of bytes / couple of lines are not significant in this context
And last but not least: You can always tweak the ks to fit your specific needs. This one is meant for an _almost_ minimal but yet general context. If you really want to go "minimal" there are at least other 5 packages that can be removed ( but this will, of course, remove some of the functionality , such as processing delta updates or selinux ). If you want to go this road, even yum itself can be removed.
On 07/22/2011 02:11 PM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
The kickstart is intended to create images which can also run onreal iron, including those with "real" storage ( brocade, qlogic etc ). Therefore the firmware is left there on purpose.
Ah I see, understood.
As of ks file size: who cares ? You create it once and use it asmany times as needed. An extra dozen or hundreds of bytes / couple of lines are not significant in this context
That wasn't my point :-) I guess I could have said "simpler" rather than "smaller" to make my point clearer. The less stuff that has to be manually specified in the file, the less work needed from a maintenance point of view. Also, it's simpler from a conceptual standpoint to see what's happening.
-Kartik
As of ks file size: who cares ? You create it once and use it asmany times as needed. An extra dozen or hundreds of bytes / couple of lines are not significant in this context
That wasn't my point :-) I guess I could have said "simpler" rather than "smaller" to make my point clearer. The less stuff that has to be manually specified in the file, the less work needed from a maintenance point of view. Also, it's simpler from a conceptual standpoint to see what's happening.
Ah, I am sorry, I misunderstood you. Yes, you are absolutely correct: the smaller the number of directives in the file, the simpler to maintain.
On 07/22/2011 07:01 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
On 07/21/2011 09:51 AM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart
Does anyone on this list have write access to that Wiki page? Since it's the #1 google search result for "centos kickstart", it'd be ideal to have it linked from there.
Enjoy.
Thanks Manuel, I'm sure this will be of help to many folks!!
One suggestion -- when I deployed the ks-minimalC6.cfg, there were still some -firmware packages that got installed and were not removed by the kickstart process. I noticed that you explicitly remove various firmware packages by name with the '-' notation. Another approach would be to remove them all programmatically in a %post section, like this:
%post rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i \-firmware | grep -v kernel-firmware)
And by the way, the above can rewritten in a shorter form: rpm -e $( rpm -qa *firmware | grep -v kernel)
rpm -qa will enumerate all packages but in fact you want only the firmware ones. So you run an useless grep to filter them when in fact rpm can do that for you in the first place.
On 07/22/2011 02:16 PM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
%post rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i \-firmware | grep -v kernel-firmware)
And by the way, the above can rewritten in a shorter form: rpm -e $( rpm -qa *firmware | grep -v kernel)
rpm -qa will enumerate all packages but in fact you want only the firmware ones. So you run an useless grep to filter them when in fact rpm can do that for you in the first place.
Cool, thanks for reminding me about that feature of rpm -qa.
-Kartik
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JDF. Franklin -
Kartik Subbarao -
Manuel Wolfshant