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My 2 cents, and possibly quite wrong: Is the ncurses packages really necessary in the minimal ubuntu image? It seems likely that curses based programs should be

My 2 cents, and possibly quite wrong: Is the ncurses packages really necessary in the minimal ubuntu image? It seems likely that curses based programs should be likely candidates for exclusion in a minimal image, as they are not usually meant for automation. Also, why are there still motd files in /etc/update-motd.d? No sshd but still a motd? Odd.

deleted 9y ago
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saosebastiao 9y ago
Doesn't the installer use ncurses?
- jchw 9y ago
  If I understand correctly, the intention for the minimal image is to be used in things like Docker containers and other lightweight environments, and not only do they lack an installer, but they also lack a kernel or bootloader; essentially, it would be composed of a minimal chroot.
  - Aloha 9y ago
    they still need the configuration tools though
    - isostatic 9y ago
      ncurses isn't required as part of the configuration -- debconf allows command line setting (and reading) of variables, and if it runs in a headless environment things like "note" get emailed to root if they can't be displayed. Our ubuntu builds are either 1) On real hardware, in which case it's a network boot which takes an IP address etc, and configured the partitions but allows you to override it (you have to press ok) or 2) On KVM builds, where virt-install is used, network detail is specified on the command line upfront and partitioning is fully automatic. Thus the majority of debconf settings are either default (a requirement of the package manager is a sensible default), or specified in the preseed file.
Aloha 9y ago
ncurses is required, debian-installer (which is used for all the configuration dialog post install too) require it.
- Daviey 9y ago
  You should be able to use readline rather than ncurses.. Or for dpkg, you could also use the noninteractive frontend.
geofft 9y ago
ncurses-base and ncurses-bin are marked "Essential" in Debian (from which Ubuntu derives, and automatically imports packages), which means that any package is permitted to depend on things in those packages without declaring a dependency - including in pre-installation scripts. This image is defined as being large enough that any package in the Ubuntu archive can be correctly installed. You could eliminate this by going through and finding all packages with implicit dependencies on ncurses-bin / ncurses-base, but that seems highly unreliable, and also a huge amount of pain, since Debian probably will not want to drop these packages from Essential (so you will end up maintaining a huge Ubuntu diff). I could also imagine a scheme where packages in Ubuntu main are scrubbed for these sorts of implicit dependencies, but packages in Ubuntu universe (which is where auto-imports from Debian go) aren't, and apt-get automatically pulls in all Debian "Essential" packages as soon as you try to install something outside main. But that's a good bit of dev work and it's not clear that you'd get a meaningful payoff. (update-motd.d is from base-files, which is also an essential package, and is actually important; again, possibly Ubuntu could carry a patch to split up base-files, but for < 1kb of text files, it's unclear this is worth doing)

deleted 9y ago

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saosebastiao 9y ago

Doesn't the installer use ncurses?

jchw 9y ago
If I understand correctly, the intention for the minimal image is to be used in things like Docker containers and other lightweight environments, and not only do they lack an installer, but they also lack a kernel or bootloader; essentially, it would be composed of a minimal chroot.
- Aloha 9y ago
  they still need the configuration tools though
  - isostatic 9y ago
    ncurses isn't required as part of the configuration -- debconf allows command line setting (and reading) of variables, and if it runs in a headless environment things like "note" get emailed to root if they can't be displayed. Our ubuntu builds are either 1) On real hardware, in which case it's a network boot which takes an IP address etc, and configured the partitions but allows you to override it (you have to press ok) or 2) On KVM builds, where virt-install is used, network detail is specified on the command line upfront and partitioning is fully automatic. Thus the majority of debconf settings are either default (a requirement of the package manager is a sensible default), or specified in the preseed file.

Aloha 9y ago

ncurses is required, debian-installer (which is used for all the configuration dialog post install too) require it.

Daviey 9y ago
You should be able to use readline rather than ncurses.. Or for dpkg, you could also use the noninteractive frontend.

geofft 9y ago

ncurses-base and ncurses-bin are marked "Essential" in Debian (from which Ubuntu derives, and automatically imports packages), which means that any package is permitted to depend on things in those packages without declaring a dependency - including in pre-installation scripts. This image is defined as being large enough that any package in the Ubuntu archive can be correctly installed. You could eliminate this by going through and finding all packages with implicit dependencies on ncurses-bin / ncurses-base, but that seems highly unreliable, and also a huge amount of pain, since Debian probably will not want to drop these packages from Essential (so you will end up maintaining a huge Ubuntu diff). I could also imagine a scheme where packages in Ubuntu main are scrubbed for these sorts of implicit dependencies, but packages in Ubuntu universe (which is where auto-imports from Debian go) aren't, and apt-get automatically pulls in all Debian "Essential" packages as soon as you try to install something outside main. But that's a good bit of dev work and it's not clear that you'd get a meaningful payoff. (update-motd.d is from base-files, which is also an essential package, and is actually important; again, possibly Ubuntu could carry a patch to split up base-files, but for < 1kb of text files, it's unclear this is worth doing)