[CentOS] Trimming the fat out of a Centos 4.4 Installation

Thu Sep 28 07:25:13 UTC 2006
Steve Bergman <sbergman at rueb.com>

On Thu, 2006-09-28 at 01:36 -0500, Erick Perez wrote:
> Hi, just to avoid re-inventing the wheel, is there any document that
> can help me reduce even further a "minimum" installation of Centos 4.4
> (BTW can you say 600mb is minimum)?

Yes, isn't it insane?

I usually just start with:

rpm -qa --queryformat "%{SIZE}\t%{NAME}\n" | sort -nr | less

and then start in with:

rpm -e packagename

noting what dependencies each package wants to take with it, of course.

Then, when I reach a point of diminishing returns with that, I switch
strategies:

cd /
du -ak | sort -nr | less

And start hacking away at any obvious offenders.  This breaks package
integrity, of course, but on CF, you may not care.

And then, just on general principles,  because I simply detest the
wretched, bloaty thing, and all its associated detritus:

find / -name "*emacs*" | sort -nr | less

And then I call RMS at 2AM to tell him how much I despise it... but I
fear I'm veering off topic. ;-)

-Steve