On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 18:35 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
Tim wrote:
> Gordon Messmer:
>
>>>>What's htdig got to do with pie charts?
>
>
> Tim:
>
>>>Nothing, it was part of another conversation: A minimal, headless,
>>>X-less, server installation installing graphical library files.
>
>
> Gordon Messmer:
>
>>Oh. Sorry, I missed some connection. To address that, then:
>>
>># rpm -q --whatrequires `rpm -q --provides libpng` | grep -v '^no '
>>cups-libs-1.1.22-0.rc1.9.11
>># rpm -q --whatrequires `rpm -q --provides cups-libs` | grep -v '^no '
>>cups-1.1.22-0.rc1.9.11
>># rpm -q --whatrequires `rpm -q --provides cups` | grep -v '^no '
>>redhat-lsb-3.0-8.EL
>>
>>So, there you go. "libpng" is needed by cups. "cups" is
needed for
>>LSB conformance. That's why you have graphics libraries on a headless
>>server.
>
>
> But CUPS isn't *needed* on a PC. Sure, you might want it if you're
> printing. But there's going to be a plethora of boxes that don't need
> to print. A headless HTTP server, or mail server, or new server, etc.,
> just being some of them. They won't need to print, or be printed to.
CUPS isn't necessary to print, either. It is a convenient solution,
but others exist.
> Requiring CUPS is a bogus requirement. Maybe CUPS should be a
> requirement if you're including printing support, but it shouldn't be,
> otherwise.
Possibly. Other print solutions exist.
> CUPS, being just one example of this mentality. We could "require"
> BIND, because Linux does need to resolve hostnames, but we don't (don't
> require *it* as the solution).
Exactly. OTOH, trying to make everything work with every possible print
driver is not necessarily a good goal.
> Some people, and I don't mean you, but those putting together what they
> think is a minimal install list, have a strange idea about what minimal
> and required actually mean.
I suppose a "minimal required system" would be the kernel, the init
RAM disc, and tmpfs for /tmp. Not a very usable system. But when
you go beyond this, then you get into "minimal required to do <x>"
where <x> is some desired function. Everyone seems to have a different
set of <x> to put into there. I don't know of any objective means
to ascertain what <x> must contain.
> But disregarding minimalism, there's still plenty of situations where a
> rather extensive installation won't need various things considered to be
> "required", but actually aren't. And that bloats out installations
to
> the point that we needlessly have to get multi-gigabyte hard drives to
> do moderately basic installations.
I was amazed when I installed FC2. I didn't think I selected
all that much to install. It was about 7 Gig.
All systems seem enormously bloated to me these days. But I
started with computers when 4K of RAM was considered a lot.
Mike
--
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This message made from 100% recycled bits.
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I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
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