> 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 First of all thank you for this complete answer, It sounds I need to be more specific. Ok, here we go. Consider a system which has an SCSI hard disk, 2GB of ram, a 64bit CPU, an internal IDE connected DVD-Drive, a common KeyBoard and an RBG connected monitor. just it. After getting done this project my expectation from this system is: When I start the system, Grub must be loaded and after choosing desired operating system, booting procedure will be started and all would be OK if after a "successful boot" I have a login page in runlevel 3 with a simple Bash access, a pure text-mode. So, any other internal or external devices like soundcard, printer, bluetooth, USB, etc... are not needed! (In this state please consider that the kernel is an RPM and I can't remove modules from it. so, I will and also must accept the overhead of kernel modules). With the above considerations, It clearly shows that something like Init, RC, initscripts, bash and grubby must be exist. but what a bout other packages? which of them are critical for a "successful boot" with above definition. Till now I just checked dependencies between installed packages and removed those that were stand alone (after doing this near 130 packages remained) but I think some of these dependencies can be ignored. But I can't find those unreal dependencies. Now I think that "Minimal Fedora" system is clearly defined. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
