SIGs/Minimal Core/Packages in the @core Group

This page documents the packages in the current @core group in Fedora's comps file. It is not the source of the comps file, nor is it authorative. It exists primarily to document the historical decisions which led to this selection of packages.

Mandatory Packages

These packages are always installed and can't be removed by deselecting them with a -packagename in kickstart. Some of them may be removable with rpm -e (if not required by something else, of course).

audit

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

basesystem

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

bash

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

biosdevname

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

coreutils

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

cronie

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

curl

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

dhclient

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

e2fsprogs

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

filesystem

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

glibc

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

hostname

• Description: Show or set the system's host name
• Needed because: Used by the traditional initscripts to do just that.
• Other notes: It's still a dependency of the packages that require it; it may not need to be explicitly listed.

initscripts

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

iproute

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

iprutils

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

iputils

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

kbd

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

less

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

man-db

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

ncurses

• Description: Utilities for the console control library
• Needed because: This contains the clear command.
• Other notes: Not to be confused with ncurses-libs, the library itself

openssh-clients

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes: scp in to the system won't work unless this is installed.

openssh-server

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

parted

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

passwd

• Description: The command-line utility for changing passwords
• Needed because: Not technically needed, especially for systems which use external auth or all keys. Could be set to "default" instead of "mandatory"
• Other notes:

plymouth

• Description: Graphical boot animation
• Needed because: Previously was the only way to prompt for disk encryption passwords on boot; no longer necessary due to systemd.
• Other notes: A good candidate for removal.

policycoreutils

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

procps-ng

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

rootfiles

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

rpm

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

rsyslog

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

selinux-policy-targeted

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

setup

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

shadow-utils

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

sudo

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

systemd

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

util-linux

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

vim-minimal

• Description: A minimal version of the VIM editor
• Needed because: It would be very frustrating to not have an editor if, for example, the system came up without networking functioning and needed an adjustment.
• Other notes: Editor wars aside, this is the basic traditional text editor.

yum

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

Default Packages

These packages are installed by default and can't be deselected in the Anaconda UI but can be deselected with -packagename in a kickstart file.

NetworkManager

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

ppc64-utils

• Description:
• Needed because:
• Other notes:

sendmail

• Description: Mail Transport Agent (MTA )
• Needed because: Probably not technically needed, although cronie defaults to sending e-mail on errors. This is here because we have multiple packages providing MTAs and we wanted a deterministic result.
• Other notes:

Packages No Longer in @Core

Packages here were previously in @core, but have been removed. This is not a comprehensive list back to the dawn of Fedora, but will serve to provide history for some of our decisions.