Rick Kelly wrote:

> NetBSD takes up less that 150 megs of space on NetBSD/sparc 1.6. When you
> syspkg everything, individual binaries won't be able to be replaced, unless

No but for example sendmail, postfix or a default non-listening 
"mini-mta" etc. could easily be pkged.  I'd also like compilers in that 
category. If it should be done that way for exactly these programs I 
mentioned I can't say right now, one would have to see in practice how 
it would work out.

> each binary and file is a separate. Solaris 8, for instance, has around 600
> packages. Some of these packages depend on others. Sun, with 10+ years
> experience, hasn't got the whole dependency chain right yet.

Well, a base Solaris could be installed with only a couple dozen 
packages, or possibly even less.  I did that with Sol9, to have a small 
base to build up from and I was amazed at what a small footprint one can 
get a usable base system (less than 100 megs disk space IIRC). It's 
quite some work, though, but there exist guides on the net for that (see 
for example Nordergraaf, "SolarisTM Operating Environment Minimization 
for Security").  And you'll end up with a system that's fairly 
consistent and doesn't contain all the marketing trash that a default 
install dumps on your platters.  IMHO with a better installation utility 
than what SunDOS uses (for example with NetBSD's) I'm sure these things 
can be done in a more userfriendly way (especially one that doesn't 
require a java system for the second half of the install, yuck Sun!).
Broken dependencies will always be a problem with a package system but 
that shouldn't keep one from attempting to get it done nevertheless.

-- 
Matthias Buelow