From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2b) Gecko/20021021 Phoenix/0.3 Description of problem: Anaconda will install a large tree of unwanted packages during install, without producing a prompt. This is especially noticeably during kickstart installations where each package to be installed is explicitly listed. Some of these packages seem to be the alternative language support for every supported language, and the dependencies required to satisfy them. If they are being included to satisfy a dependency, the dependency-resolution prompt should be presented. Others are being included for no apparent reason at all. For example, sendmail (postfix is being installed by choice), namazu, namazu-devel, openssh, openssh-clients, openssh-server, openssh-askpass, gtk+, and more. I've seen this occur both on standard and kickstart installs, although it's easier for me to quantify with a kickstart installation. It makes putting together a minimal kickstart install for servers a real nightmare, package-management-wise. This behaviour was present in previous versions of RedHat but at much-reduced level: Typically auto-installed packages were tied to the kernel (i.e. kernel pcmcia support). In 8.0, the field of packages has expanded enormously. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install without specifying one of the (many) specified packages. 2. 3. Actual Results: Canna was installed. Expected Results: Packages that aren't specified, either by selecting a group including them or by selecting them individually, should not be installed. Additional info: Unspecified packages I've found installed so far after a kickstart install (this is by no means complete, only a partial listing): Canna nvi-m17n-canna Canna-libs kinput2-canna-wnn6-v3 kWnn kWnn-devel aspell-es aspell-fr aspell-pt_BR aspell-da aspell-no aspell-ca aspell-en-gb aspell-nl aspell-sv aspell aspell-it aspell-de aspell-pt aspell-en-ca tWnn kon2-fonts-0.3.9b-13 fontconfig-2.0-3 XFree86-font-utils-4.2.0-72 fonts-ISO8859-2-1.0-8 fonts-ISO8859-2-75dpi-1.0-8 fonts-KOI8-R-100dpi-1.0-3 ttfonts-ko-1.0.11-21 ttfonts-zh_CN-2.11-29 XFree86-100dpi-fonts-4.2.0-72 fonts-ja-8.0-4 XFree86-ISO8859-9-100dpi-fonts-4.2.0-72 chkfontpath-1.9.6-3 fonts-KOI8-R-1.0-3 ttfonts-ja-1.2-16 ttfonts-zh_TW-2.11-15 XFree86-cyrillic-fonts-4.2.0-72 hanterm-xf
Created attachment 82444 [details] ks.cfg that produces no dependency warnings, yet installs many, many unspecified packages
This appears to also indicate some problems with dependency-resolving inside anaconda itself, as in auditing the resulting installation I'm finding a number of silently-resolved dependencies for packages that are listed in the ks.cfg (i.e. usermode). Perhaps the two symptoms (silently resolved dependencies and extraneous package installations) are symptoms of a larger package-selection problem?
Err, right then. Some, but not all, of these are attributable to what appears to be a bug in the Core/Base groups auto-inclusion: In auto-including the groups "Core" and "Base", anaconda doesn't bother to distinguish between 'default' and 'mandatory'. Shouldn't only mandatory packages be installed as part of the forced-install of Core/Base? I've found the error in my ks.cfg that was causing the full language support packages to be installed. A change in the meaning of "lang_support --default <language>" slipped by under my radar. :) But this still fails to explain why certain packages *not* listed in Core/Base that do not have explicit dependencies were also installed (i.e. mutt, net-snmp, openssh).
My apologies on the repeated commentary on this. The sticky mess that is package resolution in anaconda continues to amaze me. openssh/net-snmp are explained away because they're part of the 'default' packagelist in the 'base' group. However, I still can't find an explanation for mutt, as it's part of "text-internet", and has no references to either it, its group, or the various meta-groups that contain it and its groups, inside 'base' and 'core'. I've changed the summary line and priority to something more suitable. Getting a true 'minimal' set of auto-includes, at the very least in the kickstart install, would be Very Nice. Or, perhaps even better, a flag for ks.cfg to disable automatic package inclusion, so that only the specified packages get installed. I'd really hate to be forced to create weird localized kickstart trees just to get a decent server kickstart going. :)
I think you'll want to read the section on langsupport here: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/custom-guide/s1-kickstart2-options.html You have: langsupport --default en_US which installs all langs and makes en_US the default.