CENTOS Server CD project

From WBITT's Cooker!

Why Server CD?

Lately I thought of installing a XEN CENTOS 5.5 virtual machine on one of my servers out there. I needed the exploded tree of the ISO to be available. However, when I checked centos.org website, I noticed that they stopped distributing a "Single Server CD" after CENTOS 4. I could have downloaded a CENTOS 5.5 DVD image on the server but it was kind of un-desired / not practical for two reasons.

• The centos.org distributes DVD iso image through bit-torrent, and my server service provider does not allow P2P or torrent traffic.
• Even if I had one, I would have to download one big 4-5 GB file to my server. Whereas a few hundred MBs would do, if I want a text based "core" installation only.

So there arose an itch, and I decided to create a project to scratch that itch!

How would it work?

The idea is simple. I have a CENTOS 5.5 DVD already downloaded at home. I would install a virtual machine in XEN (at home) with minimal packages. Then I will take the list of packages from install.log, and remove all the packages from the main DVD repository (copied to a temp location), and update the repository metadata. The, make that new shrunk repository available through http and use the XEN installer again, to create yet another virtual machine, this time using the updated (shrunk / small) repository. If successful, I will either :

• Push the repository tarball to my XEN physical host on internet,
• Or, make a script to "wget" all the required packages from a CENTOS mirror, create a repo for the installer, and make that available through yum on that server.

Then, I can use that repo to install VMs. Since I will have the VM installed (core), and my VM will be connected to the internet through the XEN bridge on the physical host, I can always install more packages, directly from CENTOS repository.

This is infact the idea behind the netinstall.iso. However, I suspect that is is not suitable to be used to install XEN PVM. ( I may be wrong).

Packages which can be removed from @core

Here is the list of packages which I found in CENTOS-5.4-x86_64, which I was successfully able to remove, using yum, without any damage to the OS. (about 118 packages)

aspell
aspell-en
atk
authconfig
autofs
avahi
avahi-compat-libdns_sd
bitstream-vera-fonts
bluez-gnome
bluez-libs
bluez-utils
cairo
ccid
coolkey
cpuspeed
crash
cups
cups-libs
desktop-file-utils
dhcpv6-client
dnsmasq
dos2unix
dosfstools
ecryptfs-utils
ed
eject
fbset
finger
firstboot-tui
fontconfig
freetype
GConf2
gpm
gtk2
hicolor-icon-theme
htmlview
ifd-egate
iptables-ipv6
irda-utils
irqbalance
jwhois
krb5-workstation
ksh
libdrm
libICE
libjpeg
libnotify
libpng
libSM
libtiff
libwnck
libX11
libXau
libXcursor
libXdmcp
libXext
libXfixes
libXft
libXi
libXinerama
libXrandr
libXrender
libXres
libXt
libXxf86vm
mailcap
man
man-pages
mdadm
mesa-libGL
microcode_ctl
mkbootdisk
mtools
nano
NetworkManager
NetworkManager-glib
newt
notification-daemon
ntsysv
numactl
ORBit2
pam_ccreds
pam_krb5
pam_pkcs11
pam_smb
pango
paps
pcmciautils
pcsc-lite
pcsc-lite-libs
pinfo
procmail
rdate
redhat-lsb
redhat-menus
rhpl
rp-pppoe
rsh
sendmail
setuptool
slang
sos
specspo
startup-notification
syslinux
system-config-network-tui
system-config-securitylevel-tui
tcpdump
trousers
unix2dos
vconfig
wireless-tools
words
wpa_supplicant
xorg-x11-filesystem
ypbind
yp-tools
yum-updatesd