Trimming down the fat from a “minimal” Fedora install
Posted : January 4, 2005 at 4:37 pm [America/Los_Angeles]
I have always been big on reducing the “surface area” of servers exposed to the Internet. And I always felt that Fedora’s “minimal” install was anything but. Thanks to Rodolfo J. Paiz, it looks like the “minimal” Fedora Core 4 install (when it comes out) will truly be minimal after all 
Here’s an excerpt of the email Rodolfo sent this morning:
While the majority of the content is now less relevant to both the “fedora-minimal” group and the RULE Project, I have placed an updated version of my package removal schemes in the “Bare-bones Server HOWTO” on Simpaticus.com. This will be its permanent home, and I will make NO FURTHER EFFORTS to remove more packages from Fedora Core 3, so I would greatly/hugely/humbly appreciate it if some of you could go through and test my package removal recommendations to make sure they all work for everyone and have no unforeseen glitches.
The “fedora-minimal” effort will now switch gears from trying to remove packages in FC3 to modifying the comps.xml file which dictates package sets during installation. The goal is to get most of the packages we removed in FC3 out of the minimal install for FC4, so that next time we will have to do a lot less work. I would love to see the FC4 default minimal install shrink from 570MB at least down to 420MB, such that the install and a 64MB swap partition could fit into a 500MB disk.
Bare-bones Server HOWTO.
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Enjoy!!
- Anand
Category: Systems
2 Comments
Anand,
I must formally apologize, since in the last two or three months I have made absolutely no progress on this goal. Unfortunately I can only dedicate a little time to Linux efforts like my Bare-Bones Server HOWTO due to demands from the rest of my life (day job, family, yadda yadda yadda). In particular, my company is starting construction on a new shopping mall in Honduras now (May 2005) and the preparation has been murder.
I have not submitted a new comps.xml file to the FC4 team, so the minimal install will be whatever they come up with. I expect to see 650-700MB, although I have been unable to put the Test releases on my old development boxes.
I will leave the FC3 “Bare-Bones” doc online for those who do not want to upgrade to FC4 that quickly, and create an FC4 version as soon as possible after release… within the first month, I’d guess. Hopefully then I’ll be able to really set up and test a comps.xml file for FC5.
Again, my apologies for an unfulfilled promise. I’ll attempt to do better in the future, of course.
Posted by: Rodolfo J. Paiz at May 15, 2005 @ 9:05 pm
Hi
Great book. I just want to say what a fantastic thing you are doing! Good luck!
Bye
Posted by: tovorinok at July 4, 2007 @ 8:52 pm