I've got RH7.2 installed on a machine and I'm wanting to reduce the number of packages that are installed on it. Esentially remove the packages that aren't needed for a basic server.

My problem is that
1) I'm not sure what all of the packages do.
2) I'm not sure which are esential for the server to work.

Does anyone know of any sites that list the rpm packages with a description of what each package does and will give me an idea as to what's essential and what's not.

(The alternative is to use a custom kickstart file thats optimised for hosting servers. Anyone know of any good kickstart files?)

Originally posted by john@domaincity
My problem is that
1) I'm not sure what all of the packages do.
2) I'm not sure which are esential for the server to work.

Does anyone know of any sites that list the rpm packages with a description of what each package does and will give me an idea as to what's essential and what's not.


You can use RPM command to query information about packages.

Listing all installed packages: rpm -qa
List files in package foo: rpm -ql foo (this may lead you to documentation for the package such as man page or READMEs)
Describe the package foo: rpm -qi foo (gives you an idea what the package does)

Regarding your question #2, as different person has different requirement, a package that's essential to you may be useless for me, and vice versa. For example: we offer PostgreSQL to our clients, but some other hosts don't. You should try to list your own requirement and base your system installation on that.

Thanks. I've probably spent the best part of 2 days going through just about every package on the server, checking it out, and seeing what the repercussions are of removing it.

I've got the server down to 270mb, with enough packages on there to keep it useable.

Just need to get to grips with a decent control panel package now. I can't believe the prices for the commercial offerings when webmin is free!! I just don't like the 'look' of webmin :-(

Hi!
I had a suggestion. You must not compare commercial packages with webmin. Webmin is very good and I like it. However it is ment only for serverwide works not for
clients panels, billing etc...

Have a great day :)

regards
amar