On Tuesday 06 June 2006 13:23, Sam Drinkard wrote: > Ed Morrison wrote: > > Hello Everyone: > > > > I inherited a CentOS 4.x box that appears to have been installed with > > the everything installation option. I would like to strip the box > > down of all the unnecessary apps and streamline/secure it. > > Unfortunately, it is a production box and it would be quite > > inconvenient to burn down and rebuild. Does anyone have any > > suggestions on how to do this conveniently with yum and still leave > > the box in a production condition i.e. leave it's needed services up > > and running? > > > > Thanks, > > Ed > > Ed, > > I'd venture to guess, the first thing would be to identify what you > don't need, stop the processes that you don't need to run, then use yum > to remove the stuff, or just stop the processes and don't worry about > the software being on the disk unless you really need the space. > Determining what you don't really need or have to have would be the > hardest task, I'm sure, but there might be some dependencies that bite > you along the way as well. > > Sam Yeah try shutting down things before uninstalling. It can be risky depending on what's running on this production server. My best advice would be to reinstall it on another machine than migrate to what you are comfortable with. Cleaning up a messy installation can be a pain. You can break things and have a hard time getting it back as specially if he customized some of the rpms used by centos. Later, Charles