Installing fedora without the extra applications.
 

I installed Fedora 11 last night and found that it installs a lot of applications and utilities that i dont need and will never use. I tried to customise the installation before installing but there is too many of them that i just gave up.

All i need is the Apache Webserver and the mysql database. is there an easier way to installl a quick Fedora installation with just the webserver and the database and nothing else?

Thanks

It will still install the basic installation and the dependencies that the packages you selected depend on. You can not remove those packages.
Is your web server a production or a test server? You could try a CentOS5 for production for web server and it has the option of installing just web server and nothing else at installation prompt.

What i would like to do is to host a personal website on my machine. The Fedora installation will be for a production server but not a business critical system i.e. it wont be the end of the world if one day i wake up and find that the hard drive has died though i would prefer that it doesnt. I do have backup facilites in place.

I have had the site running for at least a year now, i started off with Fedora 9, then 10 and now 11.

The problem i found is that it is not very stable. On numerous occasions i have come home and found that it has frozen just like my XP machine. Fortunately i think this is a problem with the GUI aspects of it because the webserver is usually still running but the GUI is not accessible.

When i upgraded to Fedora 10, i found that it was too buggy. I could be looking at the "Services" window and all of a sudden it just disappears without a warning. Or the "Update Software " tool. A lot of the windows would open and then just close, or they would not open at all.

One other problem i also found was that upgrading is a nightmare. The system becomes unstable whenever i upgrade. The only option for me is to never upgrade but to just make a fresh install everytime there is an upgrade. This is really annoying as i have to start from the begining everytime there is a new release.

And another problem that i found is the system updates. Fedora seem to update everything everytime. Most of the time i dont need 80% of all the applications that get updated. This was getting so annoying in the end i decided not to update anything except the security updates.

Now i am planning to update to Fedora 11 and thought what if i just installed the webserver and the mysql database and uncheck everything else. I thought that this would be the best option as i dont need anything else. I just want the webserver and leave it there running as i dont use it for anything else.

I couldnt uncheck the extra applications as there is too many of them and some of them i wasnt sure whether other applications that i need e.g. the webserver will depend on them.

Now i would like some advice as to how to install a fresh copy of Fedora taht doesnt include any of the other applications. I have looked at Slackware and it looks like it is exactly what i need but it will take time to learn how to install it.

I would prefer to stick to Fedora as i have been using it for years now but if there is an option that will allow me to do this easily i am quite happy to change distributions.

What about OpenSUSE? Does it install hundreds of other applications that are never used?

I just mentioned CentOS because you mentioned Fedora. CentOS is RH clone and you would not have to worry about location of files and for that matter names of configuration files for some services. And then it has got longer life cycle than F11. The problems that you faced with F11 could be partially due to ext4 but I can not guarantee that.

And you can still customize the package installation. I do not know if Fedora has changed this recently because I changed from RH to Ubuntu for some time for desktop purposes and may be Fedora is trying to do the same for it is also swimming in the same boat.

Ziggy
have you considered any other distro's?

there are many, both small and big
that can do what you want
without being unstable

Don't know why you would want to use a distribution that is supported for only a year and that installs a ton of applications you don't seem to need. Not when there are distributions that offer base system + LAMP only (Ubuntu Server comes to mind).

I am downloading CentOS now to try it out and see if it is better than Fedora. Fedora i think is definately not the best option for server based solutions.

Ok so which other distributions provide LAMP only installations? I noticed Ubuntu is mentioned. Are there any other?

You can try debian netinstall, it will install the base system, then you can add whatever you want.
http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

CentOS5 is RHEL5 so you do not have to worry about its stability or ability to handle mission critical applications. Also it has the LAMP only installation option as I said before and is better than Fedora at server level and also has longer life cycle. Dont worry go for it. You wont be disappointed. But debian is also good.

I downloaded CentOS yesterday and had problems during installations. It installed and just stopped half way through the installation. It freezes between 20% and 40%. The problem is random so its not that a specific application is causing it.

I have always had a problem with getting my graphics (ATI 1600) to work with Fedora and i think this is causing the same problems with CentOS. Rather than trying to fix the problem i have decided to try Debian or Slackware.

I am downloading the Netinst version of Debian and will try to install a minimal LAMP installation if i can. Ill also try Slackware and see how far i will get with it.

I would really like to try Ubuntu but i tend to avoid distributions that are unlike Unix/Linux. I have tried Ubuntu before and found that it has some restrictions on the use of the root user and by default its just for Desktop type use so its not suitable for a server. I have not tried the server version and im sure that it will probably do the job but i read yesterday that sendmail is not included in the default installation.

Anyway i will try Debian tonight and see how it goes and eventually go with Slackware and have full control of everything.

Well Ubuntu that you must have tried, I am sure, was desktop edition. And hence the root user problem. Ubuntu has server edition that does not have any desktop environment and it installs all server packages by default rather than those required for running a desktop. But if you are going for Debian then you should not miss Ubuntu as it is a Debian derivative in itself.

Hey Ziggy

Debian usually always wins the "Best Server Poll" here

other choices are Slammp
at distrowatch, zenwalk based, which s slack based
http://distrowatch.com/5598

there also SlackMini-Server
http://sms.it-ccs.com/

If you wanna really go "lightweight"
microcore and server apps is good too

Hi guys,

I had a look at the debian website to download the Debian OS but i am a bit confused.
I want to download the DVD version but there are 5 DVD iso files as listed in http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/5.0.2/i386/iso-dvd/

I doubt that i need all of the application on all 5 DVD. Why are there 5 of them and which one do i need to install just the operating system and the LAMP applications?

Will it work if i just download the first one?

I did download the netinst version (3 times) but for some reason it says the archive is corrupted everytime i try to use it.

Thanks

Did you verified the md5sum ?