[CentOS] Inherited an everything box

Tue Jun 6 20:39:28 UTC 2006
Alex Palenschat <alex at nssmgmt.com>

 
> 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? 
> 

Ed, I just had to do this with a couple of boxes. A tip I would offfer
is the command "yum list extras" which helped immensely in finding any
packages that had been installed by previous admin without the benefit
of the whole yum/repository system.

Other steps I used were to do a chkconfig --list | grep ":on" to see
what was set to start and then examining the run scripts to determine
whether all services were part of a package or not.

Last, check the /etc/rc.local in case they compiled an app and installed
it manually. Many times people will install their startup commands in it
if they are unfamiliar with chkconfig etc.

Good Luck,

Alex Palenschat