CentOS 4.x - how to trim the fat ?

We plan on using CentOS 4.x on all our new servers together with Cpanel. I've done a couple of test installs on a test machine ..and even the smallest install possible ('server' I believe it was) still comes with hundreds of unnecessary rpms / software..

I was just wondering if anyone here has worked out a way to trim all the unnecessary fat so to speak and have just a lean centos 4.x install that is stable and works perfectly with Cpanel.

As most of you will already know, Cpanel downloads all the necessary things like bind, exim, proftpd, mysql etc so you don't really need to have even these things installed because the OS version of those daemons aren't used on cpanel box (AFAIK)..

I'm not experienced enough to do a manual package selection because I might end up uninstalling certain rpms that might actually be needed to have a stable/usable OS.

I have 2 reasons for doing this

1) incoming bandwidth where I am is extremely expensive so i don't wanna waste precious bandwidth downloading (quite regularly) RPM updates I do not need to have in the first place...

2) for security. It's much easier to keep a server secure when you know there aren't hundreds of useless packages installed ..

 

 

 

 

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