How Can I remove all packages except kernel and grub

[lilgamesh]

Hi,
I have made some mistakes as I did not have proper understanding of gentoo system.

Now I want to clean all of them and start from the beginning. But I am happy with the kernel I built.
So is it possible to remove everything other than kernel and grub. So that I can boot into system and get very thing what I would need.

[LoTeK]

I'm in a similar situation.

If you installed gentoo on a "normal" x86, x86_64 architecture you could save your .config file and your grub configuration on a external HD and then do a fresh install. When you reach the kernel configuration you can boot the external HD and take your old one. (same for grub). This would be a lot easier for you, because if you start deleting packages then it can get very messy.

(don't laught: I removed all perl/python packages and then my system was dead).

So a minimal system consists of way more packages or programs than just the kernel and a bootloader.

If you have installed an X-server with a WM, than you can delete every X-related file (and/or KDE, gnome etc file), but the lower level packages are not safe to delete! (at least if you don't have a deep knowledge of the relations between them).
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[slackline]

I'd do as LoTeK suggests, back up your /usr/src/linux/.config file and your grub config file (location will possibly depend on whether you installed grub or grub2) to an external storage medium and do a fresh install, then copy over them when you need to.
_________________
"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.  Art is everything else we do." - Donald Knuth

[lilgamesh]

[khayyam]

lilgamesh ...

I've not ever tried this, so it comes with a warning. Note that you will require that the world file only has packages you've installed, and not those you may have re-inistalled without using --oneshot. If your world file can be trusted to *only* have packages that should be part of world then the following *should* work ...

[John R. Graham]

khayyam,

A few pedantic comments (and you and I have never been known to be pedantic, have we?):

• Code:

  $(awk '{ print $0 }' /var/lib/portage/world)

  is equivalent to the simpler, faster

  Code:

  $(cat /var/lib/portage/world)

  which is equivalent to the even simpler & faster

  Code:

  $(</var/lib/portage/world)

• If --unmerge scares you in these circumstances, use --deselect, which merely removes the entries from the world set.
• And, if that's all you're doing, a trick (that admittedly depends on implementation specifics, although specifics that have been stable for a long time) that accomplishes the same thing much faster is

  Code:

  rm /var/lib/portage/world touch /var/lib/portage/world

- John
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[khayyam]

[John R. Graham]

Yep. TIMTOWTDI.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.