Skinnying up a fat install

[Jonathan Berry]

On 7/3/05, Philip A. Prindeville <philipp at enteka.com> wrote:
> I did an initial install of both .x86_64 and .i386 binaries for FC3 to
> an Athalon 64-based system.  Now that I think about it, it would have
> been easier just to have done a .x86_64 install, or limited myself to
> whatever binaries weren't published in .x86_64 format.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.  I hope you mean that you
installed the arch compatability libraries (or whatever they called
it) which installed the 32-bit packages for some libraries.  Did you
do this install recently?  Any reason you went with FC3 instead of
FC4?

> So I find myself with various duplicated packages, like:
> 
> aspell.x86_64
> aspell.i386
> ...
> zlib.x86_64
> zlib.i386

These are not duplicate packages, they are two different
architectures.  If you want to run any 32-bit programs (like
OpenOffice) then you will need some of the 32-bit libraries.  Some
distros have chosen to do it differently, but Fedora can install both
32-bit and 64-bit programs side-by-side.  These library packages are
needed for operating with both architectures.

> etc. and was wondering if there's an easy way to back the unnecessary
> stuff out.  I looked, for example, at removing aspell (since it should be
> fairly stand-alone) but that wasn't as easy as I thought:
> 
> [root at media ~]# rpm --erase --test aspell.i386
> error: Failed dependencies:
>         libaspell.so.15 is needed by (installed) gtkspell-2.0.7-2.i386
>         libaspell.so.15 is needed by (installed) gnome-spell-1.0.5-6.i386
>         libaspell.so.15 is needed by (installed) kdelibs-3.3.1-2.12.FC3.i386
> [root at media ~]#

This would do the dep solving for you:
# yum remove aspell.i386
Unless something is really messed up, doing a "yum remove
<package>.i386" should only remove 32-bit packages.  At least, that
statement seems like it should be valid, but is not tested.

> Is there an easy way to figure out (even if it's non-deterministically or
> misses some corner cases) what .i386 packages can be dropped from a
> fat .x86_64 install?

That depends upon what 32-bit programs you want to run.  If you really
don't want anthing 32-bit around, you might try:
# yum remove "*.i386"
Be very careful that you look over what all is being removed before
you say "yes."  Then if there are 32-bit programs you want to run
(like I said, OpenOffice is only 32-bit) use yum to install them and
it will bring in any 32-bit libs that the program needs. <disclaimer>I
have not tested this process, so procede at your own risk</disclaimer>
 Another suggestion is to install the new FC4 and be more judicious
about what you choose to install off the disk.  I'm really liking FC4
so far.

> Thanks,
> 
> -Philip

Jonathan