-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 (Please keep responses on the devel@ list; I've set it in the Reply-To.) To jump right to the premise: The default Fedora Server install is Way Too Big(TM) and the minimal install (also available on the Fedora Server install media) is also Too Big. I've been trying to do some quick-and-dirty analysis of what is in these default installations in order to figure out where we should be focusing our efforts. I'll point out that there are two goals that we need to keep in mind (and the reasons behind them) in order of increasing importance: 1) Reduce disk space usage. While disk space on physical devices is becoming trivially cheap, disk space on Cloud deployments and rented virtual servers is still comparatively very expensive. We really want to minimize the amount of space that we use for Fedora so that users can fit their applications (the stuff they actually care about) into the remaining space without being forced to buy a larger storage allotment. 2) Reduce maintenance efforts. Every additional piece of software on the system (referred to hereafter as "packages") increases the maintenance burden on an administrator. Universally, administrators prefer to have the smallest number of packages to maintain for a variety of reasons: * Limiting update churn. The more packages on the system, the more often that one will need to run updates. * Limiting security exposure. Every package on the system is another potential privilege-escalation point. Keeping this number under control means a reduced likelihood of a catastrophic breach. (The actual risk here is impossible to quantify, but it can be assumed that less code == less potential vulnerabilities. * Non-expert administrators do not always know what is installed on their systems. This can lead to unintentional breaches as an admin doesn't realize that one or more services needs to be limited (such as in the firewall or via SELinux). With these two goals in mind, the most obvious approach to improving this situation would be by reducing the number of packages installed by default on the Minimal and Fedora Server installs. As a specific goal of the Server Working Group, we want to aim for a world wherein administrators will no longer desire to install the Minimal install and instead will rely on the platform provided by the default Fedora Server install. They do not do this today because the Fedora Server installation is considerably larger. I postulate that this is due primarily to dependency bloat, which is where we should focus our efforts during the Fedora 24 timeframe. I postulate (but have not yet confirmed) that there are likely many places where we could replace Requires: with Recommends: (or even Suggests:) dependencies. In my ideal world, the difference between a Minimal and Server install would be identical to installing the same set of packages with Recommends: on or off. Some highlights of my initial research (with a lot of my raw data in the tarball attached to this email): == Minimal == === Disk Usage === /boot: 79MB /: 755MB === Packages === Total count: 270 ==== Largest 10 packages ==== 14288083: coreutils 14486819: glibc 16648994: grub2 18024040: kernel-modules 27253403: systemd 28453336: python3-libs 36004297: grub2-tools 53295853: kernel-core 86298752: linux-firmware 125178630: glibc-common ==== 10 Longest dependency chains ==== b'kbd': 116 b'dnf-plugins-core': 117 b'plymouth-scripts': 121 b'plymouth': 121 b'firewalld': 122 b'grub2-tools': 125 b'grub2': 131 b'NetworkManager': 138 b'dnf': 144 b'dnf-yum': 145 == Server == == Disk Usage == /boot: 97MB [1] /: 1.2GB === Packages === Total count: 603 ==== Largest 10 packages ==== 18590064: samba-client-libs 22484896: docker 25209005: python-libs 27253403: systemd 28453336: python3-libs 30242477: libicu 36004297: grub2-tools 53295853: kernel-core 86298752: linux-firmware 125178630: glibc-common ==== 10 Longest dependency chains ==== b'abrt-addon-python3': 170 b'abrt-retrace-client': 171 b'abrt-addon-pstoreoops': 171 b'abrt-addon-ccpp': 183 b'abrt-addon-vmcore': 190 b'rolekit': 196 b'abrt-cli': 214 b'cockpit': 216 b'freeipa-client': 249 b'fedora-release-server': 252 ==== Additional Package Groups ==== (These are the package groups we include above and beyond "Minimal Install")[2] I'm not including package sizes here since most of the space comes from their dependencies. * server-product - fedora-release-server: dependency chain length: 252 - cockpit: see below - rolekit: see below - systemd: chain 104 - chrony: 468KiB, chain 111 * server-hardware-support - lm_sensors: chain 139 - openhpi: chain 108 - smp_utils: chain 19 * headless-management - cockpit: chain 216 - PackageKit: chain 137 - rolekit: chain 196 - tog-pegasus: chain 51 * container-management - docker: chain 148 * domain-client - adcli: chain 51 - freeipa-client: chain 249 - oddjob-mkhomedir: chain 107 - realmd: chain 112 - samba-winbind: chain 131 - sssd: chain 157 - samba-common-tools: chain 129 == Notes == [1] The initramfs files are larger on Server. [2] Actually, we have a difference here; Minimal Install forcibly includes the "guest-agents" group; this is only optional on Server. Some specific observations I can make: * The largest difference in the Fedora Server install vs. the minimal install is due to the FreeIPA and Samba packages requiring the inclusion of the Python 2 stack; focusing on eliminating this requirement in Fedora 24 would have the largest impact on both the number of packages and the space on disk. * The largest individual package in both deployments is the glibc-common package. This is primarily due to the 106MiB locale-archive. I'd really like to hear from glibc folks if there is something we can do to break this up into smaller pieces contained in different sub-packages with Suggests: dependencies.