Installing minimal number of packages

[Joe_Wulf]

I REALLY like RedHat, as opposed to other distributions.  Works well for me both
at work
and at home.  I hear you, Michael with regards to the difficulties in getting to
a truly
"MINIMAL" installation.  I've got quite a bit of experience working with RedHat
Enterprise
Linux, Advanced Server v4.0.  The 'extra' stuff that gets installed is almost 150
packages
that add no value and have to be weeded out.  I've found about the same
perspective with
the Fedora line as well.

The method I've found to achieve a functional system that has minimal packages
installed
is to install it by hand once, utilize the RPM commands to get info on the
packages, then
build a list of what I want to keep and what I want to remove.  I've then coded a
script
and included with it a package disposition text file.  The script removes all the
excess
while leaving a functional system in place.  My rule was an objective evaluation
of every
package---if I could honestly see 70 percent of the systems actually use
packageX, in any
given enterprise, then the package stayed in the baseline I was building.  That
is a
pretty rigorous methodology, yet has achieve stable results.

I'm currently working on translating that to a kickstart process, as well as
apply these
lessons learned to RHEL v5.  hooo boy, is THAT gonna be fun!

<begin soapbox>
I've posted to some of the RedHat and fedora lists in the past about providing
significant
fidelity to the package installation process.  So far, there seems to be great
interest
in allowing the existing frustrations and confusion to reign.  Puzzling and sad.

In these days of system exploitations, I would have thought RedHat would desire
to lead
the charge for a system that is easy to install, minimizes the attack surface
miscreants
have open to them, robustly secures all facets of the OS from a holistic
perspective.
<end soapbox>

I wish you luck.  But, realize too, that in the end, you'll know a hell of a lot
more
about the RedHat OS than you knew before.

R,
-Joe Wulf, CISSP, USN(RET)
 Senior IA Engineer
 ProSync Technology Group, LLC
 www.prosync.com


-----Original Message-----
From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Michael
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 18:55
To: Discussion list about Kickstart
Subject: Re: Installing minimal number of packages

Shabazian, Chip wrote:
> You still get base.  A truly minimal install would be
>
> %packages --no-base
>
> But that would result in a largely unusable system, so you need to add 
> packages back in from that point.
>
> NOTE: I have not tested this on FC6, but expect it to be the same. 
>
>   

Is there not a happy medium somewhere in betwen?  I definitely want a stripped
system that includes rpm, and basic functionality but I don't want X, or lots of
bulk. 

Doing --no-base and adding back all the packages just to make it function
correctly seems tedious to get correct.

If that is the best way, can someone give me an example of what they add back?

Michael

Michael

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