Subject: Re: [vserver] Reducing a Debian guests package foot print
From: Corey Wright <undefined@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 17:42:07 -0600

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