LinuxQuestions.org - Reducing number of installed packages.

- Slackware (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/)

- - Reducing number of installed packages. (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/reducing-number-of-installed-packages-4175564278/)

Reducing number of installed packages.

New year and a little house cleaning. I ran ls -1 /var/log/packages|wc -l and it's over 1000! Many I had never heard of so I am removing them.

What I really need is to have a monitor watching the system and creating a list of files that have been loaded/used in the last 6-8 months or so.

Does anyone know if such a monitor exists? I was thinking back to tripwire or something like that.

How many does ls -1 /var/log/packages|wc -l does your -current show?

It will save me a lot of time updating -current to have fewer packages.

Reducing number of installed packages.

Slackware is expected to be fully installed. You might run in dependencies troubles unless being very careful removing packages...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tonus (Post 5480415)

Slackware is expected to be fully installed. You might run in dependencies troubles unless being very careful removing packages...

Indeed. The idea that dropping random packages (or even carefully selected packages) will "save me a lot of time updating -current" is not likely to be correct.

Some of us still enjoy using a more minimal install and being able to remove and recompile packages as needed is a great learning experience. Sure it may not make much difference in system upgrades except for potentially complicating them and hard drive space is not a concern for most people, but benefits in learning how your system works are well worth it.

On my system I use this script I found in an old arch forum post and modified slightly for slackware to make sure I did not remove anything important or to track down what extra packages need to be recompiled after an update. It works for my use case, but it probably needs a little work to be made more portable.

Code:

#!/bin/sh

#  2004/08/22  K. Piche  Find missing library references.

#  2015/11/27  orbea    Refreshed script



ifs=$IFS

IFS=':'



ARCH=$(uname -m)



libdirs="/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/X11R6/lib:/usr/libexec:/usr/$ARCH-slackware-linux:/lib64:/usr/lib64:/usr/X11R6/lib64"

extras=



#  Check ELF binaries in the PATH and specified dir trees.

for tree in $PATH $libdirs $extras

do

        echo DIR $tree



        #  Get list of files in tree.

        files=$(find $tree -type f)

        IFS=$ifs

        for i in $files

        do

                if [ `file $i | grep -c 'ELF'` -ne 0 ]; then

                        #  Is an ELF binary.

                        if [ `ldd $i 2>/dev/null | grep -c 'not found'` -ne 0 ]; then

                                #  Missing lib.

                                echo "$i:"

                                ldd $i 2>/dev/null | grep 'not found'

                        fi

                fi

        done

done



exit

For comparison here is my customized /etc/slackpkg/blacklist

Code:

# This one will blacklist all SBo packages:

[0-9]+_SBo

[0-9]+alien

[0-9]+compat32

[0-9]+_SBocompat32

[0-9]+_git



sbopkg



kde/*

kdei/*

xfce/*



# a

elilo

grub

floppy

mt-st

mtx

pcmciautils

upower



# ap

nano

pamixer

radeontool

sox

usbmuxd



# d

cvs

Cython

mercurial

rcs

ruby

subversion



# l

akonadi

alsa-plugins

attica

automoc4

GConf

glib-networking

grantlee

gst-plugins-good

gst-plugins-good0

gtkmm3

herqq

json-c

libasyncns

libart_lgpl

libbluedevil

libproxy

libimobiledevice

libgpod

liblastfm

libusbmuxd

libvncserver

libwnck

libcanberra

mm

neon

newt

pilot-link

polkit-qt

phonon*

pulseaudio

qca*

qimageblitz

qjson

QScintilla

qt-gstreamer

qtscriptgenerator

sbc

shared-desktop-ontologies

slang

slang1

soprano

speexdsp

strigi

taglib-extras

v4l-utils

vte



# n

bluez

cifs-utils

epic5

mcabber

mobile-broadband-provider-info

ModemManager

netatalk

NetworkManager

obex-data-server

obexfs

obexftp

openobex

php

samba

wpa_supplicant



# x

intel-gpu-tools

libva

seamonkey

xf86-input-acecad

xf86-input-penmount

xf86-input-synaptics

xf86-input-wacom

xf86-video-amdgpu

xf86-video-apm

xf86-video-ark

xf86-video-ast

xf86-video-ati

xf86-video-chips

xf86-video-cirrus

xf86-video-glint

xf86-video-i128

xf86-video-i740

xf86-video-intel

xf86-video-mach64

xf86-video-mga

xf86-video-neomagic

xf86-video-openchrome

xf86-video-r128

xf86-video-rendition

xf86-video-s3

xf86-video-s3virge

xf86-video-savage

xf86-video-siliconmotion

xf86-video-sis

xf86-video-sisusb

xf86-video-tdfx

xf86-video-tga

xf86-video-trident

xf86-video-tseng

xf86-video-voodoo

xf86-video-xgi-git

xf86-video-xgixp



# xap

audacious

blackbox

blueman

electricsheep

fvwm

geeqie

gv

mozilla-thunderbird

MPlayer

network-manager-applet

pavucontrol

pidgin

rxvt

sane

x3270

xchat

xine

xlockmore

xpdf

xsane



# freeslack

getty-ps

lha

unarj

amp

ipw2100-fw

ipw2200-fw

trn

zd1211-firmware

xfractint

xgames

xv



# git

libdrm

mesa

xf86-video-nouveau

OT, but orbea, you may want to add bluez-firmware to that list :) Somehow we missed it for several months, so the very early versions of the list omitted it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rinndalir (Post 5480406)

It will save me a lot of time updating -current to have fewer packages.

Why is that the case?

Are you on a slow connection?

Are you not using slackpkg?

Yes, the trimming procedure can be time consuming and is unsupported. I could have full install on my build machine, but not on my netbook, where I can only spare 3,5G
Problem is when I compile something on full install, makefile will sometimes autodetect, and then depend on wide variety of things that don't exist on netbook.
So one could say trimming does save some time in the long run, because packages build much faster on desktop, and I won't have to define deps manually if the two systems are identical.

I'd say stable 14.1 is a much better target for discarding packages, because -current requirements change all the time.
These are just some of the things I build custom for both -curent and stable:

Code:

MPlayer    cairo    gtk-engines    libvdpau  opentyrian  thunar-archive-plugin

OpenAL        edid    gtksourceview  libvpx    qmmp      wine

SDL2        ffmpeg  icecat        mc          smplayer      xarchiver

SDL2_image  fluxbox  iotop        mousepad  sqlite      xfce

So far only GNU IceCat is a pain to compile, because with the exception of zlib, it's building it's own separate libs and this takes hours.
Apart from that small inconvenience, and kde being a standard tentackled freedesktop mess, it all works nicely on top of 2G base system with X.

I'm not fussy about removing packages as I used to be. I still dump sendmail though, most of the text editors, and am leaning away from KDE in favour of XFCE.

I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone remove stuff willy-nilly, but there's a fair amount of duplication of tools.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qweasd (Post 5480522)

OT, but orbea, you may want to add bluez-firmware to that list :) Somehow we missed it for several months, so the very early versions of the list omitted it.

I don't have bluez-firmware on my system, it seems blacklisting just bluez is enough to get rid of both bluez and bluez-firmware.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tonus (Post 5480415)

You might run in dependencies troubles unless being very careful removing packages...

For example I removed yptools. I also removed a couple that were for mt. Does anyone hear even remember what mt stands for? I chuckled with nostalgia when I found those.

I also removed any that were for KDE.

BTW How many does ls -1 /var/log/packages|wc -l does your -current show?

Quote:

Originally Posted by orbea (Post 5480479)

On my system I use this script I found in an old arch forum post and modified slightly for slackware to make sure I did not remove anything important or to track down what extra packages need to be recompiled after an update. It works for my use case, but it probably needs a little work to be made more portable.

I will look at this script. I haven't used the blacklist feature as you have. This makes sense to do it this way.

Another question, can't you just comment out the SBo mirrors so ou don't get those packages?

Also Orbea is a high-end bike maker in the Basque country of Spain. Not that well known by most.
At least that is how I know the word orbea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rinndalir (Post 5480406)

What I really need is to have a monitor watching the system and creating a list of files that have been loaded/used in the last 6-8 months or so.

Does anyone know if such a monitor exists? I was thinking back to tripwire or something like that.

Yeah, some file-based IDS would do it. The way you describe it, it seems similar to what OpenBSD's security(8) script would output; perhaps worth checking out and refit for Slackware.

The other way to achieve some minimalism here would be to start from a base list of packages (e.g. something like what I did for building my Docker slackware image and add the packages you need, instead of pruning from a full Slackware install.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rinndalir (Post 5481690)

I also removed a couple that were for mt. Does anyone hear even remember what mt stands for? I chuckled with nostalgia when I found those.

Well, we still have DAT and LTO tape drives, so the magnetic tape (mt) packages are still relevant here. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by zakame (Post 5481781)

Yeah, some file-based IDS would do it. The way you describe it, it seems similar to what OpenBSD's security(8) script would output; perhaps worth checking out and refit for Slackware.

I will have a look at that. It has to be something that's not obtrusive and adds very little or no overhead to be useful.

Quote:

The other way to achieve some minimalism here would be to start from a base list of packages (e.g. something like what I did for building my Docker slackware image and add the packages you need, instead of pruning from a full Slackware install.

Is docker using containers? I have sworn off them until they are actually working as described in the docs. Which may be never.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarcT (Post 5484615)

Well, we still have DAT and LTO tape drives, so the magnetic tape (mt) packages are still relevant here.

I guess it's a viable option still. Has the technology changed at all? i.e. data densities, materials, speed, etc.?
I wish I had a DAT drive still. I have some data on DAT but no drive. Will have to take them somewhere.