unnecessary packages in images / please run autoremove

[Scott Moser]

It looks like all supported releases other than zesty have unnecessary packages in the lxd images.
Wouldn't it make sense to run apt-get autoremove before publication ?

$ for rel in $(ubuntu-distro-info --supported); do echo == $rel ==; n=autoremove-$rel; lxc launch ubuntu-daily:$rel $n; sleep 1; lxc exec $n -- apt-get autoremove --dry-run; lxc delete --force $n; done
== trusty ==
Creating autoremove-trusty
Starting autoremove-trusty
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libfreetype6 os-prober
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv libfreetype6 [2.5.2-1ubuntu2.8]
Remv os-prober [1.63ubuntu1.1]
== xenial ==
Creating autoremove-xenial
Starting autoremove-xenial
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libfreetype6
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv libfreetype6 [2.6.1-0.1ubuntu2.3]
== zesty ==
Creating autoremove-zesty
Starting autoremove-zesty
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
== artful ==
Creating autoremove-artful
Starting autoremove-artful
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libfreetype6
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv libfreetype6 [2.8-0.2ubuntu2]

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Updated as of today.

$ for rel in $(ubuntu-distro-info --supported); do echo == $rel ==; n=autoremove-$rel; lxc launch ubuntu-daily:$rel $n; sleep 1; lxc exec $n -- cat /etc/cloud/build.info; lxc exec $n -- apt-get autoremove --dry-run; lxc delete --force $n; done
== trusty ==
Creating autoremove-trusty
Starting autoremove-trusty
build_name: server
serial: 20180222.1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libfreetype6 os-prober
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv libfreetype6 [2.5.2-1ubuntu2.8]
Remv os-prober [1.63ubuntu1.1]
== xenial ==
Creating autoremove-xenial
Starting autoremove-xenial
build_name: server
serial: 20180223
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libfreetype6
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv libfreetype6 [2.6.1-0.1ubuntu2.3]
== artful ==
Creating autoremove-artful
Starting autoremove-artful
build_name: server
serial: 20180222
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libfreetype6
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv libfreetype6 [2.8-0.2ubuntu2.1]
== bionic ==
Creating autoremove-bionic
Starting autoremove-bionic
build_name: server
serial: 20180222
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

I noticed today that 'apt-get autoremove' in an amd64 cloud image will offer to remove grub-pc-bin.

That would save 2987kb of disk space.

Is there some reason we don't do this?

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

well, looked at a minimal focal image and came across this again.
We could save almost a whole 1% there.

$ lxc launch ubunut-minimal-daily:focall minf1
root@minf1:~# du -hs --one-file-system /
215M /

root@minf1:~# cat /etc/cloud/build.info
build_name: minimal
serial: 20200218

root@minf1:~# apt-get autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gettext-base libefiboot1 libefivar1 libfreetype6 libpng16-16 linux-base
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 6 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 1930 kB disk space will be freed.

[Simon Déziel (sdeziel)]

Running this "apt-get autoremove --purge" on first boot is annoying, would be nice to get rid of this as it also causes some noise when installing packages because apt reminds you to do a cleanup :)