> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Greg Swift wrote: > > I am installing as minimal of a set of packages as our internal > > requirements and dependancies allow, which ends up being about 608 packages > > if installed from a x86_64 only install tree. The second I point that same > > I am curious, is this sort of super-minimal install your recommendation or > something that came down to you from higher up? Are you also removing > docs and so on? Is disk/SAN space the main issue? Will you be running > yum or could you also remove everything but rpm itself and install updates > via a share (or even wget script)?
We effectively provide remote package management and support a few hundred SOHO setups. Our organization's application team defines a package install base that is a supported configuration. The purpose of this is to make sure that all necessary packages are there, and that packages that will not be supported for the local admins by our support staff are not there. This also provides a better base security by removing excess pieces (avahi, bind, etc) that are unnecessary complications. Disk/SAN space is not an issue. We will be using yum with rhnplugin for managing updates. Its not that I disagree w/ necessary 32bit libraries being installed, and we have only found ~4 that are necessary, but they were not even apart of what the default multilib provided! That is over 140 being installed that don't need to be. Thats another 140 packages we have to pay attention to. Another 140 we have to evaluate errata on. > I'm mainly wanting to know the motivation for these minimal installs. I've > done it myself and it feels good to have a lean web server or whatever, but > I'm not sure if removing the 32-bit stuff is the best use of my time (may > be a different answer for you of course). The motivation behind tailoring your install based on my experience and the experience of many people I've discussed this with are: 1: security (yes, an excess of packages that are unnecessary does fall into security realm) 2: update management (if I only need 400-600 packages, why would I want to deal w/ the errata a few hundred more?) 3: sanity (i had to disable what in my web server kickstart? cups, bluetooth, avahi???) But this was not the point of this thread. The point of this thread was to determine whether or not the ability to avoid installing unnecessary alternate architecture libraries was available. -greg _______________________________________________ rhelv5-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv5-list
