Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 00:26:41 +0100 From: Philip Paeps <philip@paeps.cx> To: "FreeBSD-Current (E-mail)" <freebsd-current@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Plea for base system trim Message-ID: <20030305232641.GC621@juno.home.paeps.cx> In-Reply-To: <20030305015947.M18288@znfgre.tberna.bet> References: <2F03DF3DDE57D411AFF4009027B8C36704129AE6@exchange-uk.isltd.insignia.com> <20030305015947.M18288@znfgre.tberna.bet>
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On 2003-03-05 02:14:16 (-0800), Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Subscriber wrote:
> > Would the powers that be please consider removing sendmail, bind and
> > openssl from the base system, as was done for perl with 5.0?
>
> For example, as BIND maintainer I actually _support_ the theory of removing
> BIND, however the reality is a little different. There are three main
> components of BIND; the named stuff (sbin/named, sbin/ndc, etc.), the
> userland stuff (dig, host, etc.), and the resolver library. Of those three
> things, we actually need the last two in order to include ourselves in a
> useful definition of "Unix system"
Is it actually possible for one to build a custom release without the
``unnecessary'' BIND bits? I haven't grepped the source, forgive me, but what
does 'NO_BIND=true' actually do? If I were to make a release like that, would
that end me up without resolver as well?
Likewise, would building 'NO_SENDMAIL=true' build me a pristine system void of
Sendmail bits, or will there always be some stuff left?
If those two knobs do what they promise to do, it should be fairly trivial to
compare a custom release tree with the installed base, and nuke the things one
doesn't like from the base-system at will? Or am I missing something? :-)
I'm pretty happy about having BIND and Sendmail in the base-system. Disk
space costs nearly nothing these days, and as long as they're not running (and
have their executable bits stripped, 'just in case'), I don't particularly
mind them taking up a few bytes of room.
> (although I'd LOVE to nuke nslookup, if I thought I could ever live down the
> whining and crying it would cause).
:-)
Perhaps a NO_NSLOOKUP flag? ;-)
> So keeping BIND in the base actually serves a purpose. Similar arguments can
> be made for the other components you listed.
Definitely!
> Now that said, I've been working off and on to make it easier to replace
> parts of the base with stuff from the ports. Both BIND ports have
> PORT_REPLACES_BASE_ Makefile options, and I know that they are useful
> because I use them at work.
I just spotted those flags a few days ago. They're very useful. Now my
fiddling with the BIND port is reduced to making stuff live under /var/namedb
instead of /etc/namedb as I like having / mounted read-only as much as
possible.
- Philip
--
Philip Paeps Please don't CC me, I am
philip@paeps.cx subscribed to the list.
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