Re: [vserver] Reducing a Debian guests package foot print

Thanks Corey.

Especially the fishing lessons and I do appreciate the fish dinner. :-)

This is just what I needed. The switch from the Redhat/CentOS world is
an interesting and exciting exercise.

Rod

-- 
On 01/17/2014 03:42 PM, Corey Wright wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jan 2014 14:05:59 -0800
> "Roderick A. Anderson"<raanders42@gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> I love how I seem to always post on Fridays.  Probably because I have
>> spent the previous week or more researching and testing with less than
>> optimal results.
>>
>> So on to my questions.
>>
>> I have a Linux-Vserver Debian Wheezy host up -- thank you Ben Green for
>> the instructions and the kernel&  utilities packages.
>>
>> I have created two guests so far.  One to experiment with and the other
>> is to be used for real.
>>
>>      I noticed while doing the debootstrap build there seemed to be a lot
>> of packages that have no reason to be in a guest.  Maybe it is just my
>> inexperience with the method but I don't remember seeing so many
>> packages when I built CentOS guests.
>>
>>      So I am wondering if anyone has come up with a process to remove
>> unnecessary packages.  I remember there was a thread or two about
>> something similar so if anyone remembers about when they were I will
>> search the archives.
>
> i haven't built a guest since wheezy was released (and though i've upgraded
> from squeeze to wheezy, once you clean up the installed packages on a guest,
> you really don't have to do it again), but here's my command from squeeze:
>
>   * apt-get --purge remove aptitude apt-utils cpio dmidecode ifupdown info
> iproute iptables iputils-ping isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common
> libboost-iostreams1.42.0 libcwidget3 libept1 libnfnetlink0 libsigc++-2.0-0c2a
> libsqlite3-0 libssl0.9.8 libudev0 libxapian22 manpages module-init-tools
> netbase net-tools tasksel tasksel-data traceroute udev vim-common vim-tiny
> wget
>
> besides some of those being specific to versions in squeeze (especially for
> the libraries), you'll see that some are host-related (eg hardware&
> networking, which don't generally belong in a guest) and some are personal
> preference (aptitude vs apt, vim vs nano).
>
> now that's "giving a man a fish".  let me try to "teach a man to fish".
>
>   * "apt-get install deborphan"
>   * "deborphan -Psa" (and/or "deborphan -Psan")
>   * "apt-get purge ..."
>   * repeat
>
> use deborphan to find packages that are not required to fulfill package
> dependencies (and therefor you can uninstall them without consequence,
> assuming you don't want/need the packages' functionality).  the first thing i
> do after installing a new debian release is install deborphan and uninstall
> everything i don't need/want (found by way of deborphan and perusing "dpkg
> -l" output).
>
>> Also are thee any other ways of building Debian guests on a Debian host?
>>    I just read about using a tarball or tarballs.  Is there a selection
>> that others have built?
>
> i don't build that many guests, so i always did it the long way (ie
> debootstrap, though i do use http-replicator to reduce download
> times/bandwidth).
>
> corey
> --
> undefined@pobox.com
>
>> TIA,
>> Rod