Just wondering if anyone has done any work removing unnecessary packages from a default openSUSE, thereby creating a much smaller image. The extreme might result in a JeOS.
To this point I’ve only started to collect apps which reveal “files in use,” ie dependency walkers.
But, although at various times these apps have been described as useful to remove unnecessary packages I haven’t seen any examples… It seems to be either an onerous job to evaluate each installed package one at a time for whether it’s running or not, and then to either remove or leave… Or the alternative to me is that one could simply remove every package containing files not in use and risk massively deleting more than wanted.
To date, <possibly> the app “rpmreaper” could play a role… It can display each package’s expanded dependency tree.
And, supposedly it should be possible to use this app to delete packages safely (automatically not removing anything in use) although so far I haven’t found the command to do this. But, even if rpmreaper can delete packages, as I described this seems to be a rather crude way of determining if a package should be retained.
Another utility I’ve been looking at…
rpm -qR will display dependencies but AFAIK unlike rpmreaper cannot safeguard against accidentally deleting an essential package.
Exactly; another option you may find useful is building custom system,
and an ISO or VM from that new image, using something like SUSE Studio.
Free service, simple web interface, and at the end of a few minutes of
customizing you have your own custom JeOS-based (or other based) system
just like you want it.
The unfortunate thing is that openSUSE JeOS images are not very “JeOS.”
Included by default are a full array of network troubleshooting utilities for example, totally unnecessary if things are running fine and installable if needed.
For comparison, a Deb JeOS weighs in at about 88MB, a fairly standard openSUSE JeOS weighs in at about 660MB.
Some of that might be attributable to YAST and related/required dependencies… particularly python libraries. But, as I mentioned there are a lot of files which should be removed from JeOS.
If you’re provisioning a multitude of images for various purposes (including but not limited to Docker), this difference in size is <very> significant and easily dominoes into excess hundreds of and possibly into gigabytes of unnecessary disk space usage.
Docker images for 13.2 have been slimmed down, but LEAP has not.
So, intermittently over the years I’ve looked into how to do this myself and this is where I’m at in my current effort.
Using SUSE Studio (and I’ve also set up Kiwi) is a non-starter, because typically you have to start with an available JeOS which as I described is unsuitable and then we circle around back to this thread’s subject needing a procedure and appropriate tools for further package removal.