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Very minimal CentOS image howto | Ed Wyse's Guru's Blog

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Very minimal CentOS image howto

Ive seen it said by someone at Redhat, The favorite whipping boy around here is anaconda. Every slow or failed install is anacondas fault. Never mind that someone here wrote it, and I agree. I dont like the anaconda installs, I think even the minimum install is bloated for a minimalist VM approach, so heres how I like to make my minimal CentOS install. First, download the current centos-release and centos-release-notes for your architecture from your favorite mirror. Im doing this with Fedora 13, adjust for your favorite flavor.

s uT A R C H = x 8 6 _ 6 4 w g e tf t p : / / m i r r o r s . k e r n e l . o r g / c e n t o s / 5 . 5 / o s / $ { T A R C H } / C e n t O S / c e n t o s r e l e a s e 5 5 . w g e tf t p : / / m i r r o r s . k e r n e l . o r g / c e n t o s / 5 . 5 / o s / $ { T A R C H } / C e n t O S / c e n t o s r e l e a s e n o t e Next, lets create a work directory to do this under. I have lots of space in my home directory, so Im going to use that: W K D I R = / h o m e / j j u l i a n / c e n t o s _ i m a g e m k d i rp$ { W K D I R } / i m a g e c d$ { W K D I R } Were going to use yum to do our install, so were going to create a custom yum config:

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Very minimal CentOS image howto | Ed Wyse's Guru's Blog

c a t> y u m . c o n f< < E O F [ m a i n ] c a c h e d i r = / v a r / c a c h e / y u m / $ { T A R C H } / 5 k e e p c a c h e = 0 d e b u g l e v e l = 2 l o g f i l e = $ { W K D I R } / y u m . l o g e x a c t a r c h = 1 o b s o l e t e s = 1 g p g c h e c k = 0 p l u g i n s = 1 i n s t a l l o n l y _ l i m i t = 3 r e p o d i r = $ { W K D I R } / i m a g e / e t c / y u m . r e p o s . d i n s t a l l r o o t = $ { W K D I R } / i m a g e E O F We initialize the rpm database and install the centos-release rpms: r p mr$ { W K D I R } / i m a g ei n i t d b r p mi v hn o d e p sr$ { W K D I R } / i m a g ec e n t o s r e l e a s e * r p m Now we just install the yum and rpm using yum: y u mcy u m . c o n fn o g p g c h e c ki n s t a l lr p my u m Im sure theres some way to leave gpgcheck enabled, but I havent looked for it. If someone wants to figure that out and let me know, Ill update my article. Since we created the rpm database using our parent OS, it may not be using the correct db version, so lets recreate it using the tools we just installed. Were going to reinstall using these tools, so well need the rpms we downloaded earlier as well. c pc e n t o s r e l e a s e * r p m$ { W K D I R } / i m a g e / r o o t c p/ e t c / r e s o l v . c o n f$ { W K D I R } / i m a g e / e t c / m o u n ttp r o cn o n e$ { W K D I R } / i m a g e / p r o c c h r o o t$ { W K D I R } / i m a g e r mr f/ v a r / l i b / r p m / * r p mi n i t d b r p mi v hn o d e p s~ / c e n t o s r e l e a s e * r p m y u myg r o u p i n s t a l lB a s e y u mc l e a na l l So now we have a fairly minimalist centos tree (397 packages) weighing in at about 820 Mb. You can install other packages now, set up some initial configurations, etc.

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You could have an even slimmer install if you wanted to be more selective. I find the Base group to be 2/3

9/6/13

Very minimal CentOS image howto | Ed Wyse's Guru's Blog

You could have an even slimmer install if you wanted to be more selective. I find the Base group to be sufficiently slim for most cases. If youre using pxe for nfs rooted VMs, then your image is done. Move the image where you want it, export it and see the next article about nfs rooted vms. If you need a bootable grub image for a stand-alone vm, ask me and if I get enough requests Ill write about how to do that too.

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One Response to Very minimal CentOS image howto

1. Very interesting. Id be interested to know your approach to creating a bootable grub image. Peter said this on November 29, 2010 at 12:22 pm | Reply

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