Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo Machine Cleanup

["Samir Faci" <samir.list@gmail.com>]

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I'm actually trying a slightly different approach that's almost equivalent
to doing a fresh install.

If I don't bork this up, I'll write a lil wiki on how to do this.

1.  create a loopback file system.   dd if=/dev/zero of=baseimage bs=1k
count=5242880  (5 gig image)
2.  partition the baseimage
3.  do your typical gentoo install on the baseimage file
4.  sync data from baseimage fs, to / omitting /dev /proc /sys /home making
sure this is all backed up
5.  rerun grub to make sure everything is proper
6.  reboot and pray.

so, if I'm right, that should give me a clean fresh install.  I'll take a
backup of my /etc directory and I need to remember to backup mysql db, but I
believe that should work fine.  I would do this off a liveCD if I had
physical access to the machine.

It seems like the cleanest solution.  if I run emerge -uDN (etc) world it
just keeps pulling X and other crap I removed, and since 80% of what's on
the machine it unneeded, a fresh start wouldn't hurt.

if anyone is interested, I'll post an update on how my install went once
it's back up.

--
Samir


On 7/17/07, Abraham Marín Pérez <tecnic5@silvanoc.com> wrote:
>
> Mark Knecht escribió:
> > On 7/16/07, Samir Faci <samir.list@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >>    So, I have a gentoo install that's slowly evolved over the past 3
> >> years
> >> or so years.  It's now so cluttered with packages, it's becoming
> >> ridiculous,
> >> especially for a headless server.  What I'd like to do is be able to
> >> remove
> >> all KDE/Gnome/X/gtk/qt/...etc out of the machine and not have it
> >> break the
> >> machine completely.
> >>
> >> Any suggestion on how to do go about this?  At this stage, I'd like the
> >> server to have  the basic system build, LAMP, and Postfix.
> >>
> >> If I start removing packages, then revdep complains about
> >> dependencies and
> >> ends pulling back the packages I had removed, same thing with world.  I
> >> globally removed all the X related flags I can think of.
> >>
> >> Also, in the process of switching to a hardened profile, which is one
> >> reason
> >> why I wanted to clean up the install.
> >>
> >> Thanks again,
> >>
> >> Any help would be appreciated.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Samir
> >>
> >
> > Hi Samir,
> >   You'll probably get some answers more detailed than mine but
> > fundamentally it goes something like this:
> >
> > 1) First do and emerge -DuN world and make sure everything is up to
> date.
> >
> > 2) By hand then emerge -C everything (for instance) with gnome or kde
> > in the package name.
> >
> > 3) Next do an emerge --depclean and let portage remove packages that
> > were needed for gnome or kde but not required now
> >
> > 4) Do a revdep-rebuild and see what it wants to pull in. If it's
> > trying to pull in something you don't think is necessary then do an
> > emerge -pe --tree and look at why it's getting pulled in. Either
> > remove what's causing it to get rebuilt or let it get pulled back in.
> >
> >   At this point it's lather and repeat if necessary.
> >
> >   I've done this a couple of times. It' works but be careful that you
> > don't reboot during the process as something might be gone that's
> > still necessary.
> >
> > Hope this helps,
> > Mark
> I'd proceed similar to this, but changing order:
>
> 1) Edit /var/lib/portage/world and unlist every unwanted package.
>
> 2) Edit /etc/make.conf and explicitly unset every use tag related to
> packages you don't want in your system.
>
> 3) run emerge --update --deep --newuse --ask world
>
> 4) run emerge --depclean --ask
>
> 5) run revdep-rebuild
>
> If you update your system before removing unwanted packages from world
> file you'll waste time updating packages that will be uninstalled
> afterwards (and big packages, must be said). This way you'll update only
> what you'll keep.
>
> Needless to say, it's always a good idea to back-up your system before
> proceeding.
>
> HTH,
> Abraham
>
> --
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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