CentOS - Aug 2021 - Minimising a CentOS installation

On Fri, 20 Aug 2021 at 10:25, Anand Buddhdev <anandb at ripe.net>
wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> After doing a minimal CentOS 8.4 installation, I found the following
> packages to be useful for a simple server, so I removed them:
>
> cronie-anacron (replaced with cronie-noanacron)
> alsa-firmware
> ivtv-firmware
> iwl*-firmware
> sssd-common (along with all packages that depended on it)
>
> What other things do folk usually remove to make their installation
smaller?
>
Usually it breaks down at this point because everyone has different
things they want for their minimal install. Getting 3 people to agree
on a minimal working set seems to be harder than doing a three body
physics problem :).



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Flame wars in
sci.astro.orion. I have seen SPAM filters overload because of Godwin's
Law. All those moments will be lost in time... like posts on  BBS...
time to reboot.

On Fri, 20 Aug 2021 11:17:11 -0400
Stephen John Smoogen <smooge at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Aug 2021 at 10:25, Anand Buddhdev <anandb at ripe.net>
wrote:
> >
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > After doing a minimal CentOS 8.4 installation, I found the following
> > packages to be useful for a simple server, so I removed them:
> >
> > cronie-anacron (replaced with cronie-noanacron)
> > alsa-firmware
> > ivtv-firmware
> > iwl*-firmware
> > sssd-common (along with all packages that depended on it)
> >
> > What other things do folk usually remove to make their installation
> > smaller? 
> 
> Usually it breaks down at this point because everyone has different
> things they want for their minimal install. Getting 3 people to agree
> on a minimal working set seems to be harder than doing a three body
> physics problem :).
Exactly.  To me a minimal install has just enough to run sshd, an
editor*, and yum.  It?s not very useful, so then I add diagnostics,
logging and management software, and it is no longer minimal.

My typical approach is to run `package-cleanup --leaves --all` or `yum
leaves` (might need software not on CentOS 8) and justify everything
that is there.  I have about 85 leaf packages on a CentOS 7 web
server, so a minimal package set should be smaller.  Experiment with a
disposable VM so it is easy to recover from mistakes.

Jim

* vi, or emacs, or ...