Re: Minimum Required RPM Packages for Running Fedora

On Thursday, July 15, 2010 00:03:28 siavash ghiasvand wrote:

I'm looking for a LIST of RPM packages which are sufficient to
bring up a simple kernel and nothing more.

I can erase files from an installed system and create a live disk from
them , even I can use something like "BasicLinux" or also compiling
anything from source will solve the problem But, I must bring up a PC
with minimal Fedora Official RPM packages not anything else.

As other friends said, now I'm working on UN-installing packages from
an installed system to achieve that minimum set of packages.

While I think I understand your criteria for a package being "essential" (in 
the sense that the system fails to boot if this package is not present), I am 
still confused. Booting the system is a process that takes several stages. At 
what point exactly do you consider that the system has finished booting?

Do you want to get into the login screen? Graphical? Text only?

Are you booting into runlevel 3 or maybe 1 (multiuser vs single user 
environment)?

Do you need networking/bluetooth/smart-card/other hardware support? Do you 
consider that the boot process is over before or after the initrc scripts have 
run?

Do you need to run init at all? Kernel runs init automatically *after* it has 
finished "booting itself". Is that good enough?

Do you consider a successful boot anything that does not produce a kernel 
panic?

AFAIK, in order to get the kernel up and running, you don't even need to mount 
any filesystems, other than the virtual initramfs thing in memory. Even some 
kernel modules can be stripped. For example, you can boot without 
initializing, say, sound card. Do you need that? Do you need functional USB 
ports? SCSI? Mouse? Anything other than the keyboard and graphics card? You 
can remove quite a big chunk of the kernel itself, while still retaining some 
elementary functionality, and successfully booting the kernel.

In terms of packages, for a complete barebones boot I would guess you need 
only grub, the kernel, glibc, and their dependencies. But if you want to be 
able to login after that, you will want more (init? bash?). If you want all 
hardware to work, you will want even more (initrc scripts? various deamons?). 
If you want multiuser environment, you need still more packages. Etc. You get 
the picture.

So maybe it would be a good idea to specify what exactly do you mean by 
"system has booted successfully". That way you will avoid a lot of confusion 
in getting answers, because various people have quite different opinions on 
what they consider a successful boot. Some want to see at the end the 
graphical login screen, which requires X and a whole other bunch of stuff...

HTH, :-)
Marko