Skinnying up a fat install

[Philip A. Prindeville]

Jonathan Berry wrote:

>On 7/3/05, Philip A. Prindeville <philipp at enteka.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>I did an initial install of both .x86_64 and .i386 binaries for FC3 to
>>an Athalon 64-based system.  Now that I think about it, it would have
>>been easier just to have done a .x86_64 install, or limited myself to
>>whatever binaries weren't published in .x86_64 format.
>>    
>>
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by this.  I hope you mean that you
>installed the arch compatability libraries (or whatever they called
>it) which installed the 32-bit packages for some libraries.  Did you
>do this install recently?  Any reason you went with FC3 instead of
>FC4?
>  
>

It was the arch compatibility libraries, but some others also seemed to
have been sucked in.  Not sure why.

I was surprised that there's no .x86_64 Gnome and OpenOffice versions,
for instance.

BTW:  I might write some perl scripts that figure out the dependency
graphs for various packages, so you can see what becomes unused
if a certain program or library gets removed, etc.

I'm a bit of a neophyte to RPM, though.  For instance, I couldn't
figure out how to get the list of installed RPM's with version and
architecture listed (yum list installed "*" will do this, but rpm --query
--all won't).  Likewise, the only way to get the list of dependencies
for a file that I know of is "rpm --erase --test xxx".

-Philip

>  
>
>>So I find myself with various duplicated packages, like:
>>
>>aspell.x86_64
>>aspell.i386
>>...
>>zlib.x86_64
>>zlib.i386
>>    
>>
>
>These are not duplicate packages, they are two different
>architectures.  If you want to run any 32-bit programs (like
>OpenOffice) then you will need some of the 32-bit libraries.  Some
>distros have chosen to do it differently, but Fedora can install both
>32-bit and 64-bit programs side-by-side.  These library packages are
>needed for operating with both architectures.
>
>  
>
>>etc. and was wondering if there's an easy way to back the unnecessary
>>stuff out.  I looked, for example, at removing aspell (since it should be
>>fairly stand-alone) but that wasn't as easy as I thought:
>>
>>[root at media ~]# rpm --erase --test aspell.i386
>>error: Failed dependencies:
>>        libaspell.so.15 is needed by (installed) gtkspell-2.0.7-2.i386
>>        libaspell.so.15 is needed by (installed) gnome-spell-1.0.5-6.i386
>>        libaspell.so.15 is needed by (installed) kdelibs-3.3.1-2.12.FC3.i386
>>[root at media ~]#
>>    
>>
>
>This would do the dep solving for you:
># yum remove aspell.i386
>Unless something is really messed up, doing a "yum remove
><package>.i386" should only remove 32-bit packages.  At least, that
>statement seems like it should be valid, but is not tested.
>
>  
>
>>Is there an easy way to figure out (even if it's non-deterministically or
>>misses some corner cases) what .i386 packages can be dropped from a
>>fat .x86_64 install?
>>    
>>
>
>That depends upon what 32-bit programs you want to run.  If you really
>don't want anthing 32-bit around, you might try:
># yum remove "*.i386"
>Be very careful that you look over what all is being removed before
>you say "yes."  Then if there are 32-bit programs you want to run
>(like I said, OpenOffice is only 32-bit) use yum to install them and
>it will bring in any 32-bit libs that the program needs. <disclaimer>I
>have not tested this process, so procede at your own risk</disclaimer>
> Another suggestion is to install the new FC4 and be more judicious
>about what you choose to install off the disk.  I'm really liking FC4
>so far.
>
>  
>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>-Philip
>>    
>>
>
>Jonathan
>
>  
>