One of the projects I am doing where I work is coming up with a RedHat
standard worksation load.
As this load is to be supported locally by our company (which will be
using RH9 enterprise support for fallback support), it is important not to
add extra software that would need to be supported. Our company has
metrics to meet on any support call, missing metrics costs us money and
since we are providing the software load, any application loaded must be
supported and is metered (with some exceptions but thats at management
level).
So what I have been trying to do is come up with a nice KDE linux load in
our lab. Using anaconda/kickstart and making some of my own RPMs have
eased this process but I am stuck when it comes to certain dependent RPMS.
For example,
Removing games from the load
[root@localhost gking]# rpm -e kdegames
error: Failed dependencies:
libatlantic.so.1 is needed by (installed) kdeaddons-3.1-4
libatlantikui.so.1 is needed by (installed) kdeaddons-3.1-4
libkdegames.so.1 is needed by (installed) kdeaddons-3.1-4
[root@localhost gking]# rpm -qi kdeaddons
Name : kdeaddons Relocations: (not relocateable)
Version : 3.1 Vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
Release : 4 Build Date: Mon 24 Feb 2003
05:50:52 PM CST
Install Date: Fri 26 Sep 2003 08:46:54 AM CDT Build Host:
daffy.perf.redhat.com
Group : User Interface/Desktops Source RPM:
kdeaddons-3.1-4.src.rpm
Size : 5467262 License: GPL
Signature : DSA/SHA1, Mon 24 Feb 2003 07:19:35 PM CST, Key ID
219180cddb42a60e
Packager : Red Hat, Inc. <http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla>
Summary : K Desktop Environment - Plugins
Description :
Plugins for some KDE applications: kdeaddons extends the functionality
of Konqueror (web browser and file manager), noatun (media player)
and Kate (text editor), Kicker, knewsticker.
Now i do not want to remove kdeaddons since some of the above is wanted.
But if i remove kdegames forcibly and some pieces of kdeaddons relies on
that data, then there is bound to be some instabilities with application
behavior. Thus generating support calls which is not wanted.
Example2: Kdeaddons
We dont want the Konqueror addition as the load will have mozilla; nor do
we want the newsticker.
The problem is that any application installed has to be supported.
Therefore there are those applications (duplicate, time-waisting, not
required etc) that need to be removed. Unfortunately removing KDEaddons
removes a few apps we do need in the load.
there are more examples, but the above should get the idea across.
I have found no easy way to get around this other than
- possibly taking the srpm SPEC file for say, kdeaddons, and changing it to install only the apps we
want by modifying the %files section.
- Running a shell script to remove the specific apps instead of using RPM
to yank the whole thing. This though makes updating management more
difficult as an update RPMs will need to include some post install to keep
removing the apps that arent needed (say an update to kdeaddons later as
an example).
Has anyone found a way to get granular control over what apps are
installed?
thanks
Greg
