What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

I've deleted all games except chess (will add package names on request) and
without losing any critical functionality.
Who tried any other package? Unsuccessfull strories?

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Here is a list of all apps i remove when i flash my N900:So its just the games, the secondary theme and the whole tutorial and the installer apps, but i don't need them.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

but if I try removing e.g. cherry, then mp-fremantle-pr is removed, thus marking a number of (critical?) packages as auto-removeable!

do you install/reinstall those packages manually? or have you manipulated the mp-fremantle-pr metapackage to fix the dependencies?

at the moment saying that you can delete some of those packages "without losing any critical functionality" seems a bit of a risky statement.

I would also be interested in removing a whole bunch of things I don't need, but perhaps any of you who have actually done that could explain more in detail which steps you've followed?

Thanks.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

It was a long time ago when I deleted the games. I think I just marked them as manually-installed with apt-get install. Maybe I didn't notice and deleted something useful, please add the packages which are marked for auto-removal.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

@int_ua,

Sorry for the late reply.

I suppose I could first mark (some of) those packages as manually installed so that they are not auto-remove'd, but I still find this dependency chaos very annoying.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Just reflashed device. Updated to the PR-1.3.1 with HAM
And then continued with apt-get -s purge cherry (or apt-get remove --purge cherry) and it will only uninstall cherry and mp-fremantle-generic-pr (not hundreds of packages)


I started to fill this wikipage with my experiments:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_closed_packages

If somebody want join filling, I have four steps to gather basic information.
And then I have explicitly state what happens when removed. I have tried to be verbose and comment every aspect.

I have found it is sometimes hard to say what is critical functionality. I have never used ActiveSync, so removing ActiveSync is not losing critical functionality? I rarely use bluetooth, so it is then not critical functionality? For sure when device will not start anymore = critical.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

A few days ago I decided to remove mp-fremantle-generic-pr. That was the only package that was removed, but then the list of packages I posted above are marked as being auto removeable.

I manually installed some of them (the ones that sounded like I could need them) and then did auto remove of the rest. Everything's OK for now (I didn't dare reboot yet..)

I'm going through a list of all packages in my N900 and marking the ones I would like to remove (particularly all l10n packages for language/country combinations that I will never need), but I'm still in the "preparation phase" (just editing my list on the computer).

It will take time until I actually do that, but then I'll post my results (if at all relevant). I have never flashed my N900.. and would like to keep it that way :)

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

I have also removed qtm-maemo-metapackage and its dependencies (libqtm-*), as no other package seems to depend on that (YMMV).

You can check it here:
http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...age/1.3-2+0m5/

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Soo.. I just shutdown and turned on my N900 again. No problems at all.

I marked the following as manually installed (because of mp-fremantle-generic-pr):

and then purge-removed the following:
So far so good.

Next in line are *-l10n-* (except -mr0 and -enus, -dede)
as well as ezitext-* (I don't even use the VKB at all).

Next-next in line are:
osso-systemui-splashscreen (need to make sure first)
hildon-welcome (same thing)
kernel-modules (from stock kernel, I only use kp50 now).

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

An old script that I've used to purge locales manually (there were some dependencies preventing me from purging packages IIRC):
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=61824

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

I've just added activesync and nokiamessaging to the list with no observable negative effect (assuming you do not use those services, that is :)), although I did have to reboot once since removing the AS status bar plugin messed up the system menu until after a reboot.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

ezitext* can go if you don't use the predictive text.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

removing osso-systemui-splashscreen causes N900 to reboot instead of shutting down.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

No it does not. I do not have it and I can shut down just fine.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

It should not happen. That "splashscreen" is what you see when you poweroff the N900 (it also makes a sound, depending on the settings).

But generally I would not remove to remove that package, until we understand exactly what it does (it may affect actdead mode as well).

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Be careful, removing one of those sync daemons may kill your ability to use nokia suite!

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

I volunteer as a guinea pig :) I have removed osso-systemui-splashscreen and the only effect that I have noticed so far is that my N900 shuts down faster. If reinob's suspicion is right and it does something useful as a side effect then I guess I will find out sooner or later :)

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

to check if it does some magic with going to actdead state, you can try this simple test:
1. set an alarm for next 5 minutes
2. power off your n900 after, let's say, 4 minutes
3. wait and check if the alarm rings
if it doesn't ring then something messed up (maybe after removing osso-systemui-splashscreen).

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Nah. I guess I was being too careful. When shutting down (when dbus is stopped in either USER or ACTDEAD mode), the splashscreen-util is run, which basically (as far as I can tell) makes that "dong" sound and waits to be killed.

The package also includes a module for MCE, which (I guess) makes it run when you poweroff from the MCE menu (the script in /etc/event.replace.d/ only runs the splashscreen-util if not already running, which makes me think that MCE runs it -- normally -- by itself when shutting down.)

I'll remove it from my "normal" N900 (the other two don't have it).

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

I am happy to report that misiak's experiment was successful (the alarm fired) and that, despite vi_'s warning my Nokia Suite was still working. (Thanks for the warning BTW, I would not have tried otherwise as I never use it.)

What is not working so well is eggtimer. It triggered but now refuses to shut up, even after booting to console in bootmenu and deleting the eggtimer binary manually. I doubt it is related though. It may never have worked: this is the first time ever I have actually let it trigger.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

I think it was EggTimer's fault. It could not cope well with the phone being switched off while it was counting down. It registered an alarm with alarmd and, after power down and up, the alarm triggered, but EggTimer was not running any more so there was no one to cancel the alarm. Or something like that anyway.

SSH to the rescue. Nothing else worked, pressing Stop in the dialogue just closed the dialogue which immediately sprang back and started playing again, giving me only a few seconds to do something. Repeating it several times rebooted the device. The only thing that worked was logging in through SSH and running
It had the unfortunate side effect of deleting all my alarms; fortunately I had only four.

However, I have also noticed that my whatsitsname that pops up when you press the blue up arrow and Sym/Ctrl and allows you to type extra keys now looks like this (see below). Never mind the accented characters, that's deliberate. I am referring to the colours. Could that be the result of uninstalling ezitext?

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Yup. I have exactly the same in my dev-N900 where I've also removed ezitext* including dependencies and reverse dependencies.

I think the culprit is hildon-input-method-widgets and/or hildon-input-method-plugins-western, which gets uninstalled when imengines-ezitext gets removed.

When those are removed, I guess we just get some sort of default hard-code keyboard assistant.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Another N900 "gem" worth noticing, thanks for the information :)

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Confirmed same issue here, shame there's no way of installing them with out pulling ezitext back again. Daft Nokia dependencies. :(

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Yes way! Why not download packages and repackage them without dependecies? Is it against the license? If not, I think it would be worth to give a shot and check if it works without these dependencies... Even if not, the other package contents may be extracted, examined and modified to contain only stuff needed for these.

edit: i mean, for personal use of course ;)

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

I guess this would also be something for CSSU (I already suggested in the CSSU thread that they could have a look at unnecessary dependencies). Unfortunately it may not be such a relevant topic (e.g. vs portrait support..) for the general public (which seems to have been the target for Nokia *and* for CSSU. We have to start assuming that only geeks, and an ever-decreasing number at that, actually own and use a N900).

Add.: Hmm.. maybe it's time for Maemo5 - Hacker edition

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Well, without recompiling them obviously.
As mentioned in a another thread there are lots of silly dependences that are not really proper (Nokia MetaPackage).
Will take some time to work out what can be removed and what is required.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Given the amount of traffic in this thread, I cannot but agree :)

I thought Maemo was a hacker edition :)

Edit: I am assuming that all the zzz scripts can go too. The "remove first boot flag" one is a no op anyway.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Repackaging to remove wrong dependencies != recompiling. Repackaging can be done by anyone with access to vi and tar on own system (assuming that autobuilder is working), or if we want to avoid autobuilder, deb* tools too.

None of this require any recompiling, so it can be done for closed-source packages, too. BTW, re-packaging is not against any license. You can even put it into official repos - just remember to use non-free for closed source things, and, use modified names... (to avoid overwriting original packages - current state of repos is so wonderful, that anyone can overwrite any essential package with anything, in -devel).

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Not quite (at least in my book).

Yup. We'd need to figure out which of the scripts in /etc/init.d are executed, sourced or linked by any other startup scripts (which we know now are *only* in /etc/event.d).

fmtx, funambol-cpp-api, iphb, ke-recv, ke-recv-extra, kernel-power (yup, ssh script is in /etc/init.d), pymaemo-optify, rcS, reboot, shutdown, wappushd).

As long as the above scripts don't call other scripts also in /etc/init.d we could edit/patch the corresponding scripts in /etc/event.d to include the relevant content.

Then not only /etc/rc?.d and /etc/event.replace.d/ could be deleted, but also /etc/init.d.

And then (finally) the startup scripts would all be nicely and self-containedly :) placed under /etc/event.d.

Not that it would change anything, per se, but who doesn't want a clean system?!

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Not to hijack this thread, however would effort not be better spent figuring out which stuff can be removed from the flashable firmware image to be flashed to a fresh/broken n900?

I mean removing the zzz scripts from rcs.d? Wtf is the point?

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Sure. The problem here is that some packages may be irrelevant for some, but very important for others.

So the thread as a whole doesn't really have a point. Other than just an experiment of what packages can be removed (whether you need them or not) without bricking the N900 :)

The point is cleaning up obsolete debris from ancient Maemo versions, even though it's completely non-functional. I for one like to have a clean system (as clean as I can).

But discussion about non-packages (init scripts) could maybe fit better in the boot process thread.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Not from rcS.d, from event.d. But point taken, now back to the topic. I have successfully removed osso-notes with all its l10n dependencies. Works fine, just make sure you have an alternative text editor installed. In my case leafpad.

I did not save much space BTW. Osso-notes plus with all its l10n ballast is about the same size as leafpad. But at least it is only one package, taking up one line in FAM etc.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

You could probably ditch osso-sketch and osso-rss as well. They both suck too.

Although I actually quite like osso-notes. I like the way it autosaves everything. I is just a shame it does not have a tabbed interface and the ability to paste images into the notes.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

PITA to read and edit files on another device too, due to it saving everything in HTML.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Yeah, I've forgotten about those. Yes, ditched them a while ago. Notes was a close call, but leafpad narrowly won.

I liked the fact that pulling the stylus across the screen highlighted text, like a mouse does on a desktop PC. Leafpad scrolls the text instead. But I did not like that you could not have two instances open simultaneously. That was its downfall for me.

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

The biggest file I'd like to get rid of is the locale cache and unused locale data from rootfs. I only use one language so would love to blow away/rebuild this 22.8MB file (safely). I've got about 50MB freee on rootfs, so it's not currently a burning issue, and I haven't seen any process that looks foolproof on the n900 like there was on the n810 (the localepurge script).

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

With Notes, go into options and set it to "Plain Text".

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

(as root)
# apt-get install locales

then create /etc/locale.gen, the contents of the file should look something like:
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

then run:
# locale-gen

you /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive should be much smaller than before.

if that's OK, you can stop there. If you want more, you can remove lots of things from /usr/share/locale, *BUT BE CAREFUL* some languages "depend" on others, so leave it for now until this is well documented.

(e.g.
en_US requires iso14651_t1 and en_GB)
de_DE requires i18n, iso14651_t1

also translit_cjk_compat for some reason)

Re: What packages are safe to remove (purge)?
 

Alternatively you could just copy /usr/lib/locale to /opt and symlink it back.