From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Sep 16 02:02:42 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A4036F97 for ; Tue, 16 Sep 2014 02:02:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mx.tp2.us.calorieking.net (mx.tp2.us.calorieking.net [74.53.216.228]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 7089CFC7 for ; Tue, 16 Sep 2014 02:02:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mx.sl1.us.calorieking.net (mx.sl1.us.calorieking.net [173.193.161.29]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx.tp2.us.calorieking.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B9FC3F4115 for ; Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:02:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from netserv.sl1.us.calorieking.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mx.sl1.us.calorieking.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4431B13107C for ; Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:02:22 -0700 (PDT) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at calorieking.com Received: from mx.sl1.us.calorieking.net ([127.0.0.1]) by netserv.sl1.us.calorieking.net (mx.sl1.us.calorieking.net [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id XcJ4AWbC7kyo for ; Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:02:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from egeria.internal (114.179.70.115.static.exetel.com.au [115.70.179.114]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx.sl1.us.calorieking.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 5E84A13107B for ; Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:02:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <54179A2A.8090406@calorieking.com> Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 10:02:18 +0800 From: Gregory Orange User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Remove distribution sets References: <54169E42.5020108@calorieking.com> <20140915120948.569f5458.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20140915120948.569f5458.freebsd@edvax.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-FamilyHealth-MailScanner-ID: 1B9FC3F4115.6599F X-FamilyHealth-MailScanner-VirusCheck: Found to be clean X-FamilyHealth-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (not cached, score=-15, required 6, autolearn=not spam, BAYES_00 -15.00) X-FamilyHealth-MailScanner-From: gregory.orange@calorieking.com X-FamilyHealth-MailScanner-Watermark: 1411437746.16879@I8kyYm/BsWqc6QfOPkMO/A X-Spam-Status: No X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 02:02:42 -0000 On 15/09/14 18:09, Polytropon wrote: > On Mon, 15 Sep 2014 16:07:30 +0800, Gregory Orange wrote: >> Can one remove distribution sets from FreeBSD 8.x? > > The system doesn't provide a _dedicated_ means to do this. Thank you (despite it being less than ideal news) - I wondered, but couldn't find anything stating it as such. > Basically it's possible to manually remove (delete) things > when you _know_ what you are doing. Removing manpages is > such a possible task that probably won't hurt. Have a > usable source tree at hand, so you can "make install" if > you accidentally removed something important, that's why > don't remove "make". ;-) Yes I neglected to mention this URL: https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?&t=1136 Noone responded to edogawaconan regarding a register of the components installed. I'll have a play with it, and particularly with feebsd-update.conf and see how I go. > The best way to tune an installation is at install time. -snip- Agreed. I've just heard back from hosting provider: They only have one 8.3 OS image to install, and it has this extra material in it. They're not planning a 8.4 image, so I'll have to get us to 9.x or later at some point. > It's also possible to "prepare" a stripped-down system > elsewhere and then use it to replace the installation in > question. I wonder if I'll need to pursue that. I'd rather not. > A comparable way is provided via freebsd-update where parts > to be subject of an update can be selected using its configuration > file; see "man freebsd-update.conf" for the "Components" > keyword. This might be my best option. > Probably you won't save much disk space anyway... I don't care about the disk space. The aim is twofold: 1. Reduce any extra content that widens the risk profile on a machine. If code is present, there is some chance for it to contain bugs, which leads to some chance of a security risk. 2. Ease upgrades. Already the machine has a custom kernel which I need to replace with generic. The upgrade process requires a lot of manual intervention (see below), and I'll be dealing with a number of these machines. Manual intervention: lots of prompting with "these files don't match, what do I do?" and frustratingly, an editor session opens up to compare - in the vast majority (all but a handful) of cases the differences are just the header line which doesn't matter to me. I did find the file locations (I think it was /var/db/freebsd-update somewhere) and run an awk script to clean up those files, but the freebsd-update process still opened up every file, leaving me with a 'quit editor' keystroke - ZZ from vi turned out to be the fastest, but over hundreds of files, that's still messy. Cheers, Greg.