From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 13 06:55:31 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0555337B401 for ; Fri, 13 Jun 2003 06:55:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (pa-plum1b-217.pit.adelphia.net [24.53.161.217]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E55343FB1 for ; Fri, 13 Jun 2003 06:55:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com (working [172.16.0.95]) h5DDtTOg002851; Fri, 13 Jun 2003 09:55:29 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Message-ID: <3EE9D7D1.1030801@potentialtech.com> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 09:55:29 -0400 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030429 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Steve Coile References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How to tailor installation set? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 13:55:31 -0000 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