How do I strip down a Linux system (especially CentOS 7) to only the parts that I need? I'm not asking for a specific command, but more for a hint to where I can find more about the packages that I have and what they do. If I use yum list installed I get a long list of packages. How do I know for which purpose they are on my machine? How do I know if de-installing them will not break my machine? *Edit: Thanks for the answers. Using another Linux distribution is not the way I would like to go. First we are using a software which requires RHEL or Debian and second we use CentOS on a few different machines, so I would like to keep using CentOS 7.* *Thank you nmks for the yum info command which helps a lot.* PS: I saw this: How to strip a Linux system , but my question kind of goes into another direction.

I've noticed that **strip** removes ELF sections, such as *.symtab* and *.strtab*, but is there a way to force it to remove the **.shstrtab** section as well? I already tried the -R option but it didn't work. Strip just exits as if nothing happened. The current strip version is 2.30

I've been building a Linux distro, and I've stripped the binaries, etc. The system won't use GCC or development tools, as it will be a Chrome kiosk, so it would greatly help if I could strip down the system... I was wondering, is there a way that I can delete all of the unused system files (like binaries, etc.) by watching what files/libraries are used during runtime? Maybe another method is preferred, but is there a way to accomplish something like this?

On linux samba4 is about 60MB at least on Slackware. On Solaris 11 samba4 compiled by myself and installed is 104MB! So i try strip solaris original strip #!/usr/bin/bash set -e find . | xargs file | grep "executable" | grep ELF | cut -f 1 -d : | xargs strip --strip-unneeded 2> /dev/null find . | xargs file | grep "shared object" | grep ELF | cut -f 1 -d : | xargs strip --strip-unneeded 2> /dev/null find . | xargs file | grep "current ar archive" | cut -f 1 -d : | xargs strip -g 2> /dev/null gnu strip #!/usr/bin/bash set -e STRIP=/opt/csw/gnu/strip find . | xargs file | grep "executable" | grep ELF | cut -f 1 -d : | xargs $STRIP --strip-unneeded 2> /dev/null find . | xargs file | grep "shared object" | grep ELF | cut -f 1 -d : | xargs $STRIP --strip-unneeded 2> /dev/null find . | xargs file | grep "current ar archive" | cut -f 1 -d : | xargs $STRIP -g 2> /dev/null Before run those scripts du -sh samba4 106MB After du -sh samba4 104MB Only 2mb? Is normal?

From man file , EXAMPLES $ file file.c file /dev/{wd0a,hda} file.c: C program text file: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped /dev/wd0a: block special (0/0) /dev/hda: block special (3/0) $ file -s /dev/wd0{b,d} /dev/wd0b: data /dev/wd0d: x86 boot sector $ file -s /dev/hda{,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10} /dev/hda: x86 boot sector /dev/hda1: Linux/i386 ext2 filesystem /dev/hda2: x86 boot sector /dev/hda3: x86 boot sector, extended partition table /dev/hda4: Linux/i386 ext2 filesystem /dev/hda5: Linux/i386 swap file /dev/hda6: Linux/i386 swap file /dev/hda7: Linux/i386 swap file /dev/hda8: Linux/i386 swap file /dev/hda9: empty /dev/hda10: empty $ file -i file.c file /dev/{wd0a,hda} file.c: text/x-c file: application/x-executable, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped /dev/hda: application/x-not-regular-file /dev/wd0a: application/x-not-regular-file What does executable stripping mean? Why are some of the executables stripped while others are not?

A minimal ELF executable only requires the ELF header and at least one program header in order to be functional. However, when I run strip on a short executable, it decides not to throw out the section header table or the section strings section, keeping them around although they have no purpose (as far as I know) for the program's execution. Is there a reason why these aren't removed by strip? Is there another utility which removes everything which isn't required for the executable to run? I've tried manually editing the code-golfing executable I was making to remove the section headers, and it appears to work fine, and be much smaller.

I'm trying to decrease a Linux image running SuSE, and thought about running strip on all of the system's executables. Even though I may not re-gain much disk space this way, would there be any harm in doing so?

I am trying to reduce the disk space on my computer, and du shows that the library directories (/usr/liband /lib) and binary directories (/sbin, /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin) take up the most space apart from logs which I have already emptied. Is it safe to strip all the binaries and libraries, and if so what options to strip should I use? I am hesitant to trash my system and waste time reinstalling.

What I am doing is converting mp3's with LAME. I already have an old script I wrote that works but I want to add to it this ability--to no longer delete the file but instead save it in a new root folder with sub-directories that match the using the path that it is already in. This is the code I got off the Internet that I am using in my script to get the path: c=$FILENAME xpath=${c%/*} xbase=${c##*/} xfext=${xbase##*.} xpref=${xbase%.*} path=${xpath} pref=${xpref} ext=${xfext} The xpath and path give me the directory structure /home/user/working-root-directory/band-folder/album-name/ Using that technique, how do I script this to get just the band-folder into a separate variable and the album-folder into a separate variable? Then I can use them to create new folders keeping all the mp3s in band album order to put them into a different root folder; this would eliminate me from having to move them myself so the next time I run my script I will not re-sample them again because they will no longer be in the working directoy path/folders and still have a back up copy of my files just in case.

I notice that ncurses's terminfo database on /usr/share/terminfo is about 7MB (I compiled it myself). This is too large if I want to deploy it on an embedded Linux of 64MB disk space. Is there a way to reduce its size by deleting unneeded entries and keep the most-used ones? And what's is this actually for? **EDIT**: Is there any info or reference for commonly used terminfo for regular PCs or SSH clients?

I regularly create packages for Slackware Linux and part of the process is stripping binaries so that they take up less space. I find that if I strip --strip-all (or strip with no options) kernel modules, they often fail to insert: >FATAL: Error inserting cloop (/lib/modules/2.6.38.7-smp/kernel/fs/cloop/cloop.ko): Invalid module format What level of stripping is recommended for kernel modules? If I use --strip-debug, will I remove debugging symbols that will negatively affect system performance and/or error logging?

I am building an application using g++ 4.3. I am using the with maximum possible optimization level, not using the -g option, and I am stripping symbols after it builds. If I do NOT strip symbols from my application and libraries, are the core files still useful? (When they are generated when the application crashes.) Will the core files be useful if I compile my application with maximum possible optimization? (Without -g option and without stripping symbols.)