You can throw this into /etc/yum.conf

exclude=*.i386 *.i586 *.i686
I believe if you still have .i386 packages installed, they won’t be updated after adding that exclude line, so it might be good to uninstall them if you don’t plan on using them.

Hi,

I have updated the CentOS images we have and the default yum.conf now includes the exclude line.

Always feel free to let us know of small (and large!) issues like that. We are very open to improving what we offer.

PickledOnion

Posted By: PickledOnionHi,

I have updated the CentOS images we have and the default yum.conf now includes the exclude line.

Always feel free to let us know of small (and large!) issues like that. We are very open to improving what we offer.

PickledOnionDon't forget to checkout theSlicehost articles

Hmm...do the CentOS images still contain a handful of i386 packages?

Can you confirm removing the old 32bit packages does not break anything?

How do you do it?

Bear in mind, of course, that if you have additional 32-bit packages, yum may complain about dependencies breaking by running that exact command. You would probably want to list all of the 32-bit packages you have.

In case anyone is or becomes curious, here are the results of my own cleanup efforts.

I removed all 32-bit packages:

# yum erase audit-libs.i386 cracklib.i386 cryptsetup-luks.i386 cyrus-sasl-lib.i386
cyrus-sasl-plain.i386 db4.i386 device-mapper.i386 e2fsprogs-libs.i386 ecryptfs-utils.i386
expat.i386 fipscheck.i386 glibc.i686 keyutils-libs.i386 krb5-libs.i386 libICE.i386
libSM.i386 libX11.i386 libXau.i386 libXdmcp.i386 libXext.i386 libXi.i386 libXt.i386
libXxf86vm.i386 libaio.i386 libdrm.i386 libgcc.i386 libgcrypt.i386 libgpg-error.i386
libhugetlbfs.i386 libselinux.i386 libsepol.i386 libstdc++.i386 libtermcap.i386
libutempter.i386 mesa-libGL.i386 ncurses.i386 nspr.i386 nss.i386 nss_db.i386
nss_ldap.i386 numactl.i386 openldap.i386 openssl.i686 pam.i386 pam_ccreds.i386
pam_krb5.i386 pam_passwdqc.i386 pam_pkcs11.i386 pam_smb.i386 parted.i386
readline.i386 tcp_wrappers.i386 zlib.i386

I removed all the stuff I considered unnecessary:

# yum erase acl acpid amtu anacron attr autofs bc cairo conman cups-libs cyrus-sasl
cyrus-sasl-plain dbus-python desktop-file-utils dhclient dhcpv6-client dosfstools dump
ecryptfs-utils finger fipscheck fontconfig freetype gamin gamin-python gettext hesiod
htmlview iptables-ipv6 jwhois krb5-workstation ksh kudzu lftp libaio libdaemon libdrm
libICE libSM libtiff libutempter libX11 libXau libXdmcp libXext libXft libXi libXrender libXt
libXxf86vm logwatch m4 mesa-libGL mgetty microcode_ctl mlocate mtools mtr nc nscd
nss_db nss_ldap nss-tools ntsysv numactl oddjob oddjob-libs pam_ccreds pam_krb5
pam_passwdqc pam_pkcs11 pam_smb pango paps parted patch pax perl-String-CRC32
pinfo pkinit-nss portmap procmail psacct pygobject2 quota rdate rdist redhat-menus
rhpl rmt rng-utils rsh setarch setserial sos specspo stunnel symlinks syslinux
system-config-network-tui system-config-securitylevel-tui talk tcsh tmpwatch tree
udftools wireless-tools xorg-x11-filesystem ypbind yp-tools yum-updatesd

(Yum messed up the order of redhat-menus and desktop-file-utils, so redhat-menus failed to uninstall. I had to reinstall desktop-file-utils, uninstall redhat-menus, then uninstall desktop-file-utils. Not sure if this was a fluke or what....)

Here's a list of packages which I believe were not in the 5.2 image, but that I chose to keep. Most of these I would have installed manually anyway:

at
audit
authconfig
bind-libs
bind-utils
binutils
crash
ftp
gnupg
ipsec-tools
iptables
irqbalance
lsof
mailx
make
man-pages
readahead
rsync
setuptool
tcpdump
telnet
time
traceroute
unzip
which
words
zip

To help with figuring out what I could get rid of, I generated something resembling a two-level dependency tree using the following one-liner (apologies for the lack of wrapping; the formatted output does not play well with copy and paste):

for p in `rpm -qa --queryformat '%{NAME}\n' | sort`; do echo $p; rpm -q --whatrequires --queryformat '    %{NAME}\n' `rpm -q --provides $p | cut -f1 -d' '` | grep -v "^no package requires\|^    ${p}$" | sort -u; done

Here's a snippet of the output:

basesystem
    glibc
bash
    info
    initscripts
    sysklogd
    vixie-cron
    ypbind
bc
bind-libs
    bind-utils
bind-utils
binutils
    crash
bzip2
    man

So for each package p, list (indented) all installed packages that depend on p.

Hope this is helpful to someone...

edit: fixed stupid formatting bug which caused Preview output to differ from actual output

Cool, thanks.:)

When I run ‘yum install gcc gcc-c++’ on my newly cleaned slice, all the dependencies listed are 64-bit. What sort of problems did you have?

It’s surprising to hear of software having trouble with /usr/lib versus /usr/lib64.