Re: Rebuilding minimal install iso RHEL 4 (U1)

[Aleksandar Milivojevic <alex milivojevic org>]

Quoting Ed Wilts <ewilts ewilts org>:

> On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 11:35:23AM -0400, Francis Swasey wrote:
> > On 10/6/05 11:27 AM, Ed Wilts wrote:
> > >Basically a minimal install should be what you need to boot and run most
> > >standard utilities and make it easy to select individual packages or
> > >grouips on top of that via kickstart.
> >
> > What are the "standard utilities" and who gets to pick them ???
> >
> > I would think the default shell (bash), up2date, and networking is about
> > all that should be the DEFAULT minimum install... if I want more than
> > that, I can up2date it onto the box or take the time to learn kickstart,
> > so I can get the custom build I want and then who cares what the min
> > install is....
>
> What I think you're missing is some of interactions between packages.
> For example, without python, up2date won't work.  There may be shell
> scripts in other minimal packages that require ash or csh. The problem
> is we don't know what all the interactions are and they may not all be
> there in the rpm specs as dependencies.
>
> You have the power to build whatever configuration you want with
> kickstart or pre- and post-installation scripts.
>
> Red Hat picks the "standard utilities".  That's the distributor's job.
> If you don't like the choices, you either customize what they give you
> or find another distributor that ships the packages the way you want
> them.  Alternatively, you may log a formal change request to outline
> what you need and why and it may be considered for a future change.

My definition of "standard utilities" is a basic stuff needed for 
sysadmin. Couple of shells (so that scripts work), stuff like grep, 
find, ls, kill, ps,
basic vi editor, sed, awk and so on.  Manual pages shouldn't be part of
minimal.  Log rotation stuff would be in nice to have category 
(requires cron).
Ethernet is de-facto standard for LAN, so it is the only networking 
that should
be there by default (wireless, ppp, pppoe, and so on are always easy to add as
needed).

It would be way easier for people to build their own versions of "standard
minimal install" if something like the above was available 
out-of-the-box.  I'm
not saying that the above minimalistic type of install should be there by
default, but it should be selectable using advanced options (or by 
hitting "OK,
I want advanced stuff and I really know what I'm doing" in installer GUI).

Currently you get at least Base + Core, which is way too bloated, and it looks
to me that majority of people share that opinion.

Using not well documented (is it documented anywhere at all?) 
"--nobase" switch
to "%packages", you can select only Core group to be installed (and its
dependencies, if any, whould be nice if there were none, ie if Core was
self-contained).  This is already much better and cleaner "minimal" install,
however it is available only to experienced admins that use kickstart
installation (impossible to do from GUI).  And very few people know that the
option even exists (which means, Red Hat could remove it in future, without
hearing much fuss about it).

The question is, should the Core be cleaned even more, or majority of people
really need everything that is inthere?

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.