[CentOS-devel] how minimal is a minimal too minimal

On 03/19/2014 06:41 PM, Jeff Sheltren wrote:
> Karanbir Singh wrote:
>> the aim being to setup a base image, that is under 150mb to download and
>> deploy.
>>
>>
> I think there are (at least) two different types of "minimal" that could
> (and should) be provided.
>
> 1) "working server minimal" which would have at least yum and sshd --
> this could be similar to what we do for minimal now, though I'm not
> totally opposed to shrinking it down a bit more.
     As co-author of the initial minimal.iso shipped by CentOS, I've 
always considered the current minimal ( which mimics the DVD "minimal" 
option and bundles all @base ) way too bloated. Personally I always use 
a trimmed down version of the minimal-C6 kickstart which I have uploaded 
to nazar.karan.org ( along with other useful kickstart files it used to 
be available at https://nazar.karan.org/tree/bluecain.git).
     Incidentally the ks I use for servers includes %packages --nobase 
--excludedocs

>
> 2) "really really minimal -- and we mean minimal!" -- where the goal is
> to strip out as much as possible, no docs, no yum, no ssshd, etc.
>
> I don't have a use for (2) personally, but use (1) -- or at least one of
> my own making -- quite frequently.  I'd be happy if we could keep both.

Let's trim the current minimal to what it once was and call it "micro" 
:) However I am not very keen into not including yum and 
openssh-{clients, server} unless we also provided a script which brings 
those easily for those needing them. And I suggest that because 
installing all yum deps via rpm is a bit tedious.