CentOS virt - Jul 2011 - Suggestions to improve this minimal kickstart config for CentOS 6?

I've come up with the following kickstart config (see below) for 
deploying a minimal CentOS 6 VM. It takes about 460MB. I'm assuming that 
all of the -firmware RPMs aren't needed for a VM installation, so I 
removed them. Also removed as many selinux packages as possible since I 
don't need that.

I was wondering whether anyone could offer any further suggestions on 
minimizing the disk usage of the VM image.

Also, I wanted to ask whether it might make sense to post this type of 
configuration to the CentOS wiki, possibly linked from the following page:

http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart

This might make it easy for people who are building VMs for reference.

Thanks,

	-Kartik

=======
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
timezone America/New_York
auth  --useshadow  --passalgo=md5
selinux --disabled
firewall --disabled
zerombr
bootloader --location=mbr
network  --bootproto=dhcp --device=eth0 --onboot=on
services --enabled=network
rootpw admin123

clearpart --all --initlabel
part / --asprimary --fstype="ext3" --grow --maxsize=1000 --size=1

# Repositories
url --url="http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6.0/os/x86_64/"

%packages --excludedocs --nobase --instLangs=en
@Core

%post
rpm -e $(rpm -qa |grep -i firmware)
yum -y remove audit authconfig checkpolicy libsemanage libselinux-utils 
policycoreutils selinux-policy selinux-policy-targeted
rm -rf /etc/selinux/targeted
rpm -e --nodeps redhat-logos

%end

On 07/19/2011 12:36 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
> rpm -e $(rpm -qa |grep -i firmware)
This should be changed to:
rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i firmware | grep -v kernel-firmware)

Since apparently kernel depends on kernel-firmware.

	-Kartik

On 07/20/2011 04:48 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
> On 07/19/2011 05:36 PM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
>> Try the attached ks. It installs around 180 packages. libselinux-utils
>> is in because I find it mandatory to be able to modify the selinux
>> configuration of an existing system.
>
> Thanks for the info. I created a VM with this config and it took up 
> about 512MB of disk space, which is higher than the kickstart file 
> that I posted (about 460MB).
you removed selinux and also used rpm -e --nodeps which I would never 
promote (even if I also use on occasions).
ditch from my list the packages which install firmware and you'll end up 
at roughly the same size as yours. anyway my target was never minimal 
space on disk (today even CFs and SSD are several times larger than what 
the ks installs ) but minimal number of packages while still maintaining 
out of the box all the proper functionality ( or at least my vision on 
it), including for servers with real storage behind them ( brocade, etc 
). and I emphasize again: including selinux tools.

> I'm running x86_64 so I'll probably see different sizes than your 
> system which appears to be i686.
my ks works on both, just adjust the repository used for install

>
> In any event, thanks for taking the time to post your kickstart file. 
> It helps me validate that what I have is reasonably minimal, that I'm 
> probably not missing any major sources of size reductions. 
welcome

On Tue, 2011-07-19 at 12:36 -0400, Kartik Subbarao
wrote:
> I've come up with the following kickstart config (see below) for 
> deploying a minimal CentOS 6 VM. It takes about 460MB. I'm assuming
that
> all of the -firmware RPMs aren't needed for a VM installation, so I 
> removed them. Also removed as many selinux packages as possible since I 
> don't need that.
> 
> I was wondering whether anyone could offer any further suggestions on 
> minimizing the disk usage of the VM image.
>  ...
> 
> =======> 
>  ...
> rootpw admin123
  I use the --iscrypted option so people can't easily see my default
root password.  An easy method of viewing the command is looking
at /root/anaconda-ks.cfg (at least it was in 5) after install.  For
setting unique initial root passwords, there is a method for creating it
on the command line.
>  ...
> # Repositories
> url --url="http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6.0/os/x86_64/"
> 
  Shouldn't we encourage the creation of a local mirror?  Installs are
much faster.  Also, with local mirrors, you can snapshot the repo.  This
allows for testing updates before pushing them to your live servers.
>  ...
  I create ks files for many of my CentOS and CentOS derived (Elastix)
boxes.  Backups take less space when you only save data.  Routers are
great for this as they rarely change (except possibly for firewall
rules).  With PXE boot, I can rebuild a router in 10 minutes.  Also
handy if the router hardware fails (I'm using old PCs).  An on-site user
without any Linux knowledge can install a replacement router (or
re-install an existing router if it is suspected to be compromised) in
little time.  As long as the ks file is used as the master configuration
where changes are made and the router re-installed to make them active,
you don't get into a position where a change is lost if the hardware
fails.