The Open Source Journal

RedHat is one of the most widely used Linux distribution, at least in the corporate and academic sectors. It's been around for years and after all the shit they've gotten from users trapped in RPM "dependency hell," you'd think they'd have learned SOMETHING by now, right?...Right?

The obvious answer is no, RedHat has apparently learned nothing.

My experience in embedded computing, and embedded Linux in particular, has led me to become a minimalist by heart (I'm sure my years of using Gentoo Linux haven't helped either).

So when I see my HEADLESS SERVER pulling in shit like Gnome, GTK2, Bluez, isdn4k-utils (people still use ISDN?!) and the insane array of crap required to run these things, my head practically explodes.

In this particular case, however, I'm installing Scientific Linux, a RHEL5 derivative. Unfortunately, it's plagued by the same fscked up dependencies as traditional RHEL5 machines. Even after unchecking every possible thing from the installer (including crap like "Editors," "Text Based Internet," and "System Tools") it still bogged me down with a complete install of Gnome and other shit. God damnit, when I say DO NOT INSTALL GNOME - I mean DO NOT INSTALL GNOME.

As I was tearing RPM's out of my system left and right, removing the huge quantities of crap I clearly don't need (cups! argh!) for a dumb-as-dirt NFS server, I encountered the Ultimate Evil(TM) in RPMs: redhat-lsb.

This ONE package single handedly manages to require you to install a veritable metricfuckton of software that, in my ever so humble opinion, should not be on a server UNLESS I ASK. For example:

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -e libX11 libXt libXtst libXinerama libXext libXi libXfixes libXxf86vm libXres startup-notification --allmatches
error: Failed dependencies:
libX11.so.6()(64bit) is needed by (installed) redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.x86_64
libX11.so.6 is needed by (installed) redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.i386
libXt.so.6()(64bit) is needed by (installed) redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.x86_64
libXt.so.6 is needed by (installed) redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.i386
libXext.so.6()(64bit) is needed by (installed) redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.x86_64
libXext.so.6 is needed by (installed) redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.i386
libXi.so.6()(64bit) is needed by (installed) redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.x86_64
libXi.so.6 is needed by (installed) redhat-lsb-3.1-12.3.EL.i386

WTF! I get that RedHat wants to be compliant with the Linux Standard Base (LSB), but this is fscking ridiculous! What could possible be in this package that's so god damn important? (This is long...)

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -ql redhat-lsb
/bin/mailx
/bin/redhat_lsb_init
/etc/lsb-release.d
/etc/lsb-release.d/core-3.1-ia32
/etc/lsb-release.d/core-3.1-noarch
/etc/lsb-release.d/graphics-3.1-ia32
/etc/lsb-release.d/graphics-3.1-noarch
/etc/redhat-lsb
/etc/redhat-lsb/lsb_killproc
/etc/redhat-lsb/lsb_log_message
/etc/redhat-lsb/lsb_pidofproc
/etc/redhat-lsb/lsb_start_daemon
/lib/ld-lsb.so.3
/lib/lsb
/lib/lsb/init-functions
/usr/bin/lsb_release
/usr/lib/lsb
/usr/lib/lsb/install_initd
/usr/lib/lsb/remove_initd
/usr/sbin/redhat_lsb_trigger.i386
/usr/share/man/man1/lsb_release.1.gz
/bin/mailx
/bin/redhat_lsb_init
/etc/lsb-release.d
/etc/lsb-release.d/core-3.1-amd64
/etc/lsb-release.d/core-3.1-noarch
/etc/lsb-release.d/graphics-3.1-amd64
/etc/lsb-release.d/graphics-3.1-noarch
/etc/redhat-lsb
/etc/redhat-lsb/lsb_killproc
/etc/redhat-lsb/lsb_log_message
/etc/redhat-lsb/lsb_pidofproc
/etc/redhat-lsb/lsb_start_daemon
/lib/lsb
/lib/lsb/init-functions
/lib64/ld-lsb-x86-64.so.3
/usr/bin/lsb_release
/usr/lib/lsb
/usr/lib/lsb/install_initd
/usr/lib/lsb/remove_initd
/usr/sbin/redhat_lsb_trigger.x86_64
/usr/share/man/man1/lsb_release.1.gz

Wow, them's some important files. Mostly empty directories and empty files, a few scripts, some symlinks, and statically linked binaries.

Now I admit; I haven't gone through the scripts to really look at what they do (some of them link to chkconfig...), so maybe they use some kind of GUI stuff. I DID check the executables and libraries to verify they're statically linked. So WTF? Why do I need to install X, Gnome, and a smorgasborg of other inherent shit?

Now, being a learned geek, if someone wants to explain to me why redhat-lsb absolutely requires these things, I welcome the opportunity to learn, from strong enough evidence, of course. But personally, I'm willing to sacrifice some "LSB compliance" if it means I don't need to install a goddamn desktop on my server.