Deinstalling X and all dependencies

[andrew clarke]

On Sun 2008-07-27 12:52:56 UTC+0200, bsd (bsd at todoo.biz) wrote:

> I have just received a new system that's planned to be a large scale DNS 
> server.
> I have asked the guy who has setup the hardware not to install X?
>
> This has been useless!!
>
> I am now ending up with 250 apps in the port tree!!

He probably just went with the defaults.

> Is there a good way to get rid of all these useless apps without  
> breaking the system?
> What would you suggest?
>
> Like removing X and It's dependencies?
>
>
> I can also remove all apps in the port tree and recompile only the one  
> needed?
>
> What's best what do you suggest.

FreeBSD provides a "base system" with software such as a SSH daemon,
Sendmail, BIND, etc.  You can uninstall all the packages on your
system, but the FreeBSD base system will still remain.  This allows
FreeBSD to boot normally without any packages installed.

I recommend you uninstall all packages (with 'pkg_delete -a', or
'pkg_delete -av' if you want to watch all the files being deleted),
then install only what you need from the Ports tree.

Your DNS server should probably not require any packages to be
installed, as DNS server software (BIND) is provided with the FreeBSD
base system.  But that really depends what your requirements are.

Regards
Andrew