Bug 232382

Summary: anaconda adding unnecessary packages from distro
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Reporter: Luke Meyer <lmeyer>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 4.3   
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Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2007-03-23 18:37:55 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Luke Meyer 2007-03-15 04:37:06 UTC
Description of problem:
We have a custom distro based on RHEL4 U3.  The install image can produce
several different kickstarts so the set of packages is a superset of what is
needed on any one kickstart.

We are finding that anaconda is installing more RPMs than are in the package
list (e.g. ftp and nfs-utils).  These RPMs do not provide deps for anything
(they may be removed with rpm -e after install).  Worse, one RPM it's adding
actually conflicts with a legitimate RPM - we roll several RPMs with the same
files as redhat-release but anaconda insists on installing redhat-release and
one other of these RPMs in addition to the one in the package list, causing a
conflict (and indeterminacy as to which files are actually installed - depends
on which order anaconda picks).  

How reproducible:
Every time.

Steps to Reproduce:
Install our custom distro (we can provide if you'd like to test).

Actual results:
Difference in the package list from the kickstart file versus what was actually
installed.  Also rpm -Va shows a conflict on /etc/redhat-release

Basically, just want to know if this is a known problem, if you have any
suggestions, etc.

Comment 1 Jeremy Katz 2007-03-23 18:37:55 UTC
By default, we install the contents of the base and core groups.  An argument
(--nobase) was added to stop installing @base in an update release of RHEL4, but
there's no way to disable installation of the @core set of packages as those are
considered required to have a "valid" installation