Minimal installation

[Carlos Rodrigues]

Hi!

I've tried to do a minimal installation of FC3, only to find that it 
really isn't that minimal... So, my suggestion is: would it be possible 
to have a really minimal installation option? I was thinking something 
like the base installation of the BSDs.

Carlos Rodrigues

-- 
url: http://tudo-sobre-nada.blogspot.com

[Ralf Ertzinger]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 04:38:25PM +0000, Carlos Rodrigues wrote:

>  to have a really minimal installation option? I was thinking
> something 
>  like the base installation of the BSDs. 
I think this depends on what you define as minimal.
A kernel and a statically linked shell would suffice :)

[Enrico Scholz]

fedora-devel(a)camperquake.de (Ralf Ertzinger) writes:

> > to have a really minimal installation option? I was thinking
> something 
> > like the base installation of the BSDs.
>
>  I think this depends on what you define as minimal. 
The programs covered by the Posix Shell and Utilities (XCU) specification[1]
plus a few base-utilities like rpm.

Unfortunately, the related packages have lots of Requires: so that
e.g. a minimal system for FC2 consists of 53 packages with <100 MB
(afair). I do not know the numbers for FC3 but the situation becomes
worse there since the huge kernel package gets added to the minimal
system (in FC2, the kernel was not part of the minimal package set).

But there are other packaging errors which bloat the system. E.g. when you
install 'gnupg' (required by apt or yum), you have to install perl + openldap
(around 50 of unneeded and additional MB). A simple solution would be the
splitting of the 'gnupg' package into a core- and an extra-subpackage, but
nobody cares about it.


>  A kernel 
Yes, the kernel is one of the worst packages in fedora; the headers (20-30
MB of wasted place + 6000 inodes) do not belong in a base package. I hope
that this disastrous error will be fixed in FC4.




Enrico

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/contents.html

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 06:19:12PM +0100, Enrico Scholz wrote:
>  fedora-devel(a)camperquake.de (Ralf Ertzinger) writes:
>  > I think this depends on what you define as minimal.
>  
>  The programs covered by the Posix Shell and Utilities (XCU) specification[1]
>  plus a few base-utilities like rpm. 
This would include c99, ctags, fort77, lex,
pax, strings, uucp, yacc.
The "small router" folks might disagree. :)

Not to mention things not included in Fedora at all, like SCCS or compress.
	Mirek

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Miloslav Trmac <mitr(a)volny.cz&gt; said:
>  On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 06:19:12PM +0100, Enrico Scholz wrote:
>  > The programs covered by the Posix Shell and Utilities (XCU) specification[1]
>  > plus a few base-utilities like rpm.
>  This would include c99, ctags, fort77, lex, pax, strings, uucp, yacc. 
POSIX Conformance includes c99 as a requirement only with the C-Language
Development option (same with some of the others you listed).  pax is a
good requirement (as it may eventually supersede tar and cpio and should
be able to handle both formats).  UUCP is an XSI extension as well.

Some things get pulled in by LSB compliance as well.  redhat-lsb is in
base and requires X libraries and something providing /usr/sbin/sendmail
(which could be a simple send-only MTA; that is probably a sane
requirement).

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams(a)hiwaay.net&gt;
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

[Carlos Rodrigues]

Ralf Ertzinger wrote:
>  On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 04:38:25PM +0000, Carlos Rodrigues wrote:
>  
>  
> >to have a really minimal installation option? I was thinking something 
> >like the base installation of the BSDs.
>  
>  
>  I think this depends on what you define as minimal.
>  A kernel and a statically linked shell would suffice :)
>   
That would be way too minimal :)

What I define as minimal is something that only contains the base of a 
working system not intended for any specific purpose, providing a 
minimal compile environment (gcc + glibc-devel + g++ maybe) and network 
connectivity (xinetd, dhcp client), plus a way to pull other packages 
into the system (rpm + yum). The diskspace necessary shouldn't go too 
much beyond 300Mb.

Right now, a minimal system gives us too much cruft, and forces the "rpm 
-e" of quite a few packages. I guess a rule of thumb should be "if there 
is a significant amount of people out there that would remove this 
package upon installation, then it isn't minimal". Of course there is an 
amount of common sense here, there are some packages that I could remove 
from my system, but don't bother me much if I don't.

I'm not trying to suggest a "10Mb Fedora install" here. ;)

Carlos Rodrigues

PS: like I said, this is just like the BSDs base install.
PS2: BTW, can someone point me to some of the somewhere else mentioned 
kickstart files for doing this? (If they aren't easily googlable)

-- 
url: http://tudo-sobre-nada.blogspot.com

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 04:38:25PM +0000, Carlos Rodrigues wrote:
>  I've tried to do a minimal installation of FC3, only to find that
> it 
>  really isn't that minimal... So, my suggestion is: would it be possible 
>  to have a really minimal installation option? I was thinking something 
>  like the base installation of the BSDs. 
Yes, it would be possible. However, there's a significant amount of work
involved in determining exactly which packages are required for that. Feel
free to hack up a comps file that works to your satisfaction and post it
here.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm(a)mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>

[Jef Spaleta]

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:38:25 +0000, Carlos Rodrigues
<carlos.efr(a)mail.telepac.pt&gt; wrote:
>  I've tried to do a minimal installation of FC3, only to find that
> it
>  really isn't that minimal... So, my suggestion is: would it be possible
>  to have a really minimal installation option? I was thinking something
>  like the base installation of the BSDs. 
This comes up somewhat frequently.  My understanding is that some
people in the community have been working on making kickstart files
and post-installation instructions to produce more minimal installs. 
Its a completely valid approach that people can use, and kickstart
files provide a range of minimal install targets depending on the
dedicate purpose once people are aware of kickstart.

But if you want to make the anaconda installer's native concept of
minimal more minimal then you have to re-work the comps.xml
information that defines the groups anaconda uses. This isn't an
unaccomplishable task, and my understanding is the red hat developers
who oversee anaconda in fedora are willing to accept reasonable
changes to the groupings which make the minimal option more minimal
but do not affect the desktop or workstation install.  But its going
to take some concerted effort and concensous from community who want
to see this change.  Having everyone interested in making this happen
individual offer small changes that the developers have to review is
going to burn too much developer time that the developers don't have
to spare. The real reason the minimal install option isnt better is
more a matter of priorities than complete uninterest.  If community
members who want to see this changed can work together and provide
something concrete for a groups.xml file that can be reviewed, things
might actually move forward.

What i personally would love to see from community members who are
interested in enhancing the minimal install option in anaconda is to
start publishing alternative comps.xml files that can be used to
generate new iso images that other people in the community can test
and try out and then give feedback on.  The goal being... to craft a
new comps.xml file  that ONLY changes the minimal install.. but leaves
the rest of anaconda functioning exactly the same. The same desktop
and workstation install behavior would absolutely be a must.  And
keeping the visible groups in custom install the same would be
desirable as well.  There's no reason why interested community members
can't learn how to edit the groups defined in comps.xml and try to do
some coherent testing of changes before asking for the changes to be
included in fedora.

-jef

[Paul P Komkoff Jr]

Replying to Carlos Rodrigues:
>  I've tried to do a minimal installation of FC3, only to find that
> it 
>  really isn't that minimal... So, my suggestion is: would it be possible  
What annoys me most - is x11 libraries in minimal install.
But they are there by purpose - some another package requires it. But,
anyway, this isn't "minimal install - suitable for small routers"
anymore.

-- 
Paul P 'Stingray' Komkoff Jr // http://stingr.net/key <- my pgp key
 This message represents the official view of the voices in my head