Ubuntu

State of essential packages

Asked by Removed by request

I'm using Ubuntu 13.10 dev and I'm thinking about the current state of the essential packages. First here is the state of the essential packages of my system:

sworddragon@ubuntu:~$ installed-packages -s all | grep E
#011 0000-00-00 00:00:00 [EA] dpkg
#013 2012-10-17 14:56:31 [EA] base-passwd
#015 2012-10-17 14:56:31 [EA] perl-base
#016 2012-10-17 14:56:31 [EA] base-files
#019 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [EA] debianutils
#020 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [E_] grep
#024 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [E_] diffutils
#026 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [EA] dash
#028 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [EA] bsdutils
#029 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [E_] e2fsprogs
#030 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [EA] coreutils
#031 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [EA] findutils
#032 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [E_] gzip
#036 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [E_] bash
#038 2012-10-17 14:56:32 [E_] hostname
#062 2012-10-17 14:56:33 [E_] libc-bin
#071 2012-10-17 14:56:34 [EA] tar
#073 2012-10-17 14:56:34 [EA] sed
#074 2012-10-17 14:56:34 [EA] mount
#077 2012-10-17 14:56:34 [E_] ncurses-bin
#078 2012-10-17 14:56:34 [E_] login
#084 2012-10-17 14:56:34 [E_] ncurses-base
#092 2012-10-17 14:56:35 [EA] util-linux

E stands for essential and A for automatic installed. So I'm having 23 essential packages - 10 of them are marked as manual installed (this is also the minimum amount of manual installed essential packages that is currently possible (if I don't have made a mistake)). There are some things I'm wondering about:

1. Is it wanted that ncurses-base is not a dependency of ncurses-bin (or vice versa)?
2. Are the following packages really needing the essential flag?: perl-base (are there essential scripts that are using perl?), grep, diffutils, findutils, hostname, libc-bin (in case replaced then by libc-6), sed
3. Shouldn't be linux-image-generic an essential package too?

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This question was originally filed as bug #1238415.

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Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton) said : 		#1

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1238415/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#2

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.