Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 09:55:29 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: Steve Coile <scoile@nandomedia.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How to tailor installation set? Message-ID: <3EE9D7D1.1030801@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0306130713450.25975-100000@localhost.localdomain> References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0306130713450.25975-100000@localhost.localdomain>
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Steve Coile wrote: > I'm relatively new to FreeBSD, having come into a position administering > it only a few months ago. My experience is primarily with Red Hat Linux > and Solaris. Please bear with me. > > On several other Unix variants which which I have experience, I could > safely remove components of the operating system using the package > management system. > > For instance, if I don't want Emacs installed, I could instruct the > package management system (e.g. RPM) to remove Emacs, and all of the > files associated with Emacs would be removed. > > Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a way to remove individual > components from FreeBSD. I noticed that I can choose not to install some > (broad-based) components at the initial system installation. > > Is there a way to cleanly remove select components from the system > after installation? Depends on the component and how the previous admin handled things. Most FreeBSD users use the ports/package system to add/remove programs. The docs are very good: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports.html However, some parts of FreeBSD are part of "distribution sets" (such as man pages, source and ports tree) I don't know of any automated way to remove these from the system. Some things are fairly straightforward. If you want to remove the ports tree, it's just 'rm -r /usr/ports/*'. Others may be more involved. Since FreeBSD comes with all the tools necessary to build your own software, it's also possible that the previous admin didn't use ports/packages, which means removing the software will depend on the particular software itself. But this is a danger with all Unix-like systems. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com
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