It may be useful to reduce the size of the installation footprint on Embedded systems, or on older computers or laptops with limited drive space, or in cases where a small installation is preferred. Minimal systems in general also carry security benefits because fewer packages means that there are fewer security exploits available.

Remove non-critical packages

Except essential packages ( aptitude search '?essential' or dpkg-query -Wf '${Package;-40}${Essential}

' | grep yes ), you can remove what you don't need.

The following packages are non-critical and can be removed:

acpi

acpid

aptitude TUI package manager

at

aspell

aspell-en

avahi-daemon

bash-completion

bc Cli calculator

bin86

bind9-host

ca-certificates

console-common

console-data

console-tools

dc

debian-faq

debian-faq-de

debian-faq-fr

debian-faq-it

debian-faq-zh-cn

dhcp DHCP Client

dhcp3-client DHCP Client

dhcp3-common DHCP Client

dictionaries

dnsutils

doc-debian Debian Project Documentation

doc-linux-text Linux How To and FAQ Documents

eject Eject compact disks

fdutils Floppy Disk Utilities

file Determines file type

finger

foomatic-filters Not needed by cups

gettext-base

groff Additional files to supplement groff-base

gnupg GNU privacy guard

gnu-efi Extensible Firmware Support

grub Grand Unified Boot Loader

hplip Not needed by cups

iamerican

ibritish

info

ispell

laptop-detect Tool to detect whether system is being used on a laptop

libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 This is required by cups

libc6-amd64 Not recommended for generic 486 machines using generic IA32 architecture

libc6-i686 Not recommended for generic 486 machines using generic IA32 architecture

libgpmg1

manpages

mtools

mtr-tiny Full screen traceroute

mutt

nano Terminal text editor

netcat

net-tools

ncurses-term Additional terminal type definitions

openssh-client

openssh-server

openssl

pidentd

ppp Point to Point Protocol

pppconfig A text menu for configuring PPP

pppoe PPP over ethernet driver

pppoeconf Configures PPP/ADSL connections

read-edid Information collection for plug and play monitors

reportbug Debian Bug Reporting Tool

smclient Not needed by cups

ssh

tasksel An initial installation tool

tcsh C Shell

traceroute

unzip

usbutils

vim-common Alternative vi editor engine

vim-tiny An alternative vi editor

wamerican

w3m Terminal Based World Wide Web Browser

whois

zeroinstall-injector

zip

The following packages cannot be removed, even though marked as optional:

busybox (This is currently required by the kernel due to a dependency bug)

# Remove non-critical packages (don't remove busybox -> don't sure if this ist still a problem on debian 7) # ~i -> list all installed packages # !~M -> don't list automatic installed packages # !~prequired -> don't list packages with priority required # !~pimportant -> don't list packages with priority important # !~R~prequired -> don't list dependency packages of required packages # !~R~pimportant -> don't list dependency packages of important packages # !~R~R~prequired -> don't list dependency packages of dependency packages of required packages -.- (two levels should be enough. Have not found a recursive option) # !~R~R~pimportant -> ... required packages # !busybox -> don't list busybox # !grub -> don't list grub (we need a boot manager. If LILO or something else is used change this) # !initramfs-tools -> don't list initramfs-tools (else the kernel is gone) apt-get purge $(aptitude search '~i!~M!~prequired!~pimportant!~R~prequired!~R~R~prequired!~R~pimportant!~R~R~pimportant!busybox!grub!initramfs-tools' | awk '{print $2}') apt-get purge aptitude apt-get autoremove apt-get clean

Reconfigure apt so that it does not install additional packages

Add the following entries to the /etc/apt/apt.conf configuration file:

APT::Install-Recommends "0" ; APT::Install-Suggests "0" ;

Replace packages with smaller equivalents

Replace packages with smaller equivalents : debconf-english (replaces debconf-il8n) levee (replaces nvi and vim-tiny) lpr replaces lpr-ng or CUPS) madplay (replaces mpg123, mpg321 and mp3-decoder) mutt (replaces GUI MailUserAgent: Evolution, Thunderbird) alsa-utils (replaces pavucontrol) slrn, tin (replaces GUI Usenet NewsReader) irssi (replaces GUI IRC clients) jed, xjed (replaces Emacs) w3m, lynx, links (replaces GUI WebBrowser) dash (replaces bash, this currently breaks)



Remove unwanted files at install time

Unwanted files, like most of the files from the following sections, can be removed at install time by using dpkg filters, see dpkg(1) --path-exclude and --path-include options.

Remove unnecessary packages in general

Apt has an inbuilt feature to remove files that are no longer required by your system. Run the following command to remove unnecessary packages:

# apt autoremove

Unfortunately, apt does not always manage to find and purge all unused files. This can be a problem particularly when a program has been installed outside of apt (such as with make install ). Therefore, the best solution to removing unnecessary packages is to not install them in the first place.

deborphan is a useful package for finding any other unnecessary packages in the system. To find such packages run:

deborphan --guess-all

Be careful when removing suggested packages, as they may have package dependencies that may still required by your system.

Packages can be deleted manually if needed be and you know what you are doing. Just be sure to know exactly what is being removed by checking the packages information:

apt show <package name>

When removing packages, make sure to not break Debian!

Remove unnecessary locale files

The introduction of LanguagePacks (tdebs) may also help in reducing the size of the installation footprint.

It is recommended that the number of locale configurations installed is kept to a minimum. By limiting the number of locale files built you can save 90% of the space taken up by storing these systems on your system and saves the compilation time for building the locale settings for each package. A side effect or reducing the number of locale options is that the compilation of the glibc library gets a lot faster.

localepurge is a useful package for removing unneeded localizations. It can reclaim storage space of already installed locales or prevent installation of locale files in future package installations.

ToDo: complete this section

Note: See the dpkg filters.

Remove foreign language man files

With appropriate privileges, it is possible to remove the foreign man pages as follows:

rm -rf /usr/share/man/?? rm -rf /usr/share/man/??_*

Note: See the dpkg filters.

Remove unnecessary kernel modules

Build a smaller kernel using fewer options

You can remove the packages xserver-xorg-video-* that you don't use. you should still keep xserver-xorg-video-vesa.

Reduce the size of the initramfs

create /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/compress with the content

COMPRESS=xz

Remove unnecessary ipv6 files

If you are using only [ipv4] internally, then the following [ipv6] files can be removed:

/lib/xtables/libip6t_ah.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_dst.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_eui64.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_frag.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_hbh.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_hl.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_HL.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_icmp6.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_ipv6header.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_LOG.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_mh.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_REJECT.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_rt.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_DNAT.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_DNPT.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_MASQUERADE.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_NETMAP.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_REDIRECT.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_SNAT.so

/lib/xtables/libip6t_SNPT.so

Remove /etc/alternatives

If your applications have been mapped using traditional methods, then it is possible to remove the /etc/alternatives directory.

The gain is extremely minor, and there's no much point in doing this.

Replace the getty processes with the ngetty single process daemon

The getty processes can be replaced by the ngetty single process daemon to reduce virtual memory utilization:

Use busybox built-ins instead of full packages

You can use the tiny busybox tools instead of installing full packages. Run busybox to see which applets are available. man busybox gives you details on each applets and which parameters are supported. e.g. busybox df starts the df applet from busybox.

Add busybox less to the Debian Alternatives System as pager

Debian Alternatives System doesn't link to two words like "busybox less". If you just create a symbolic link in /usr/local/bin (ln -s /bin/busybox /usr/local/bin/less) then every time you call less, busybox less will be started since echo $PATH

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

The solution is to create a shell script named busybox.less that calls "busybox less $@".

cd /usr/local/bin echo /bin/busybox less \$\@ >busybox.less chmod +x busybox.less echo 'export PAGER="pager" >>/etc/profile #pager without -s because busybox less doesn't support -s (--squeeze-blank-lines), default is "pager -s" update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/pager pager /usr/local/bin/busybox.less 40 \ --slave /usr/share/man/man1/pager.1.gz pager.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/busybox.1.gz update-alternatives --config pager #activate "busybox less" manually

Rebuilding packages using the Tiny C Compiler

Rebuilding packages using the Tiny C Compiler does not reduce size of packages. Differences between tcc and gcc

Compress binaries/libraries using UPX

If they don't reside on btrfs with transparent filesystem compresssion on. Do this with care, some systems are not supported by UPX, and some binaries break. See: https://packages.debian.org/upx-ucl