remove native DSL appls, remastering

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: remove native DSL appls, remastering
started by: drj

Posted by drj on June 20 2005,23:45

I have two questions regarding remastering (meo instructions):

1. how do I un-install/remove/purge some un-needed native applications (say Siag, from original DSL iso image), without breaking other depenencies; It seems apt-get can not remove those native packages

2. how do upgrade (say ndiswrapper) to a newer release, can I use ndiswrapper from its web site, not customized for DSL)? I finally made ra2500 wireless to work half the time (ra2500 hardware present, fuzzy), I have to re-load it many times every boot to have wlan0 shows up. once it works, it is quite stable;

By the way, anyong knows how to boot DSL dirctly from PCMCIA adapter (CF), it appears under DSL as /dev/hde1. My /dev/hda1 is NTFS and windows loader did not work. I am booting DSL from a USB pendrive. thanks

Posted by darkhooda on June 23 2005,22:33

I think most of the typical programs that you'd want to remove (xmms, siag, so on) can be simply deleted straightforward off the CD, though that shouldn't be the best way.

I need some help on doing this cleanly too, so anyone?

Posted by drj on June 24 2005,12:57

my goal is to fit other appls to DSL (<60M) on a 64MB flash pendrive. I am thinking 3 possible ways

1. simply rm files (if I can identify them all for a specific appl without breaking other depenencies)

2. when distributing appls (.dal or .tar.gz), include a filelist so that uninstall is possible

3. document and post steps of making the official DSL distro, so that people can follow and have their own ways (scripts to strip down Knoppix would be nice :>)

Posted by mikshaw on June 24 2005,14:54

Hope this helps with manually removing apps...

Most applications are installed into 3 directories ($PREFIX being /usr, /usr/local, or nothing): $PREFIX/bin, $PREFIX/share, /etc. Many programs also install libs into $PREFIX/lib, but unless you are sure another app does not depend on these libs it's best to leave them alone.

Executables are in the bin directories, usually named something similar to the package name. Delete files from these directories and the program will not run...what you will be left with is mostly configs and shared data files. You should be very careful removing stuff from /bin, since this is the directory containing all of the very basic tools needed to start up and run the system. /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin are a bit less vital, although care should still be taken.

Data files such as images, sounds, documentation, and examples are found in the share directories, in a subdirectory of a similar name as the package.

Configuration files are in /etc, usually in the root of /etc for a single file, or in a subdirectory for multiple files.

There are sometimes applications installed as self-contained packages, which makes it very easy to remove. A prime example in DSL is Firefox, which is installed into /usr/local/bin/firefox/. Remove this directory and the program is gone (except for the plugins directory in /opt)