GNOME without KDE (no flamewar intended)

[drunkahol]

A quick question that may or may not have a quick answer.

I'm building a network install of RHEL3 using TFTP and an FTP server for a client. To investigate this, I'm doing the same at home on a spare PC usign FC3.

The crunch is that the client wants to have a minmum install that has a desktop, so is demanding the GNOME desktop but not the KDE desktop. I'm a GNOME user myself, but there is NO intent here to fan any GNOME vs KDS flamewar - both are excellent desktops in my view.

However, the kickstart install.cfg file that I created with the GUI kickstart editor still installs KDE despite me removing KDE from the install.

A bit further digging shows that the desktop-printing package is installed as part of the GNOME package group, but has a REQUIREMENT that KDE is installed too. desktop-printing is also installed by the KDE desktop package group, but there is no REQUIREMENT for the GNOME desktop.

So I come to an impass. I need to install the GNOME desktop due to clients instructions. But we want all KDE packages excluded. The same dependancy exists in the Fedora Core 3 comps.xml file.

I don't want to install without resolving dependancies (as the Red Hat support guys suggested). And I'd rather install by package group instead of specifying each and every package individually.

Does anyone know how to get round this (without editing the comps.xml file)? Or should I file a bug?

Cheers

Duncan

[foolish]

File a bug.

Have you looked into kickstart? In theory you can launch a post install script in kickstart that removes the packages you don't want. It's a bit nasty to install just to remove, but it might work.

See the kickstart documentation for Red Hat 9 (it's the latest available):
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...t2-howuse.html

[drunkahol]

Yes - a bug looks like the way to go. Feels odd to me that no-one has noticed it before with RHEL or Fedora though.

Our %post install script is quite heafty already; installing database products, joining the server to the Active Directory, setting up Kerberos authentication for the users, creating all the necessary users, installing RRDTool for server & database monitoring, building empty databases and restoring backups of last data sets etc etc.

Looks like I'm going to be editing the comps.xml file for now though, as the client wants an install that uses the minimum bandwidth possible. The idea is that we can rebuilt a remote server over the WAN in around an hour! The servers all have HP's Integrated Lights Out, so we can control the console directly via a web browser and boot the machine at will. But installing the KDE packages takes too long over their WAN.

Our %post install script is quite heafty already; installing database products, joining the server to the Active Directory, setting up Kerberos authentication for the users, creating all the necessary users, installing RRDTool for server & database monitoring, building empty databases and restoring backups of last data sets etc etc. Uninstalling it afterwards isn't an option due to the time constraint.

Thanks though.