replacing rsyslogd in minimal with journald [was Re: systemd requires HTTP server and serves QR codes]

[Jesse Keating]

On 10/09/2012 05:55 AM, John.Florian at dart.biz wrote:
>> From: "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" <johannbg at gmail.com>
>
>> I personally want to see the documentation releng/fesco has about what
>> the default minimal set, what the process is to have something
>> include,excluded from it and why the packages that exist in it are there
>
>> in the first place.
>
> I too would very much like to see this as almost all of the (hundreds,
> soon to be thousands of) systems I manage start life as a minimal install
> and grow "just enough" to fit their role.  I take "minimal" quite
> literally in that I believe it should be the absolute minimum to boot,
> login and install more atop of that, but only as needed.  Anything beyond
> this is some "use case", but minimal is minimal.
>
> --
> John Florian
>
>
>
>

And now we see why Anaconda did /not/ have a "minimal" option for a 
while.  Minimal means different things.

To some, it means an OS that boots, lets root log in, read man pages, 
use non-english languages, and add more packages with depsolving.  To 
others it means an OS that boots and lets root login, and that's it. 
Others feel that minimal should be enough to give you a filesystem and 
runtime you can chroot into (but no kernel/bootloader).

Right now, "minimal" is defined in comps, as a set of packages. 
Installing this group will depsolve and add more of course, which is 
controlled by the packages itself.  Anaconda will add a few more things 
forcefully, such as a kernel and a bootloader and potential arch 
specific utilities, as well as authconfig and 
system-config-firewall-base in order to add the root user and configure 
the firewall.

There are a couple places to make adjustment to what "minimal" is, comps 
and the packages.  As for the things Anaconda adds, we're not too keen 
on having that be "configurable".  Anaconda is really meant to be 
creating bootable systems, not necessarily stripped down chroots.

That said, we do have multiple install paths in Anaconda now, and it's 
not beyond the realm of imagination that there could be a mode that 
creates a chroot, optionally bootable, with a very trimmed down set. 
This would likely have to be driven by kickstart files, but does seem to 
dovetail a bit with the Arm effort, where installs are just blasting 
bits onto a SD card.

Interested parties should take up this effort and run with it, the 
Anaconda team won't likely be spending any time on this for a while, if 
ever.  We will however review patches and guide those wanting to work on it.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!