Jens Elkner writes:
> Hmmm, currently I'm trying to strip down a zone Sol10 06/06 environment (e.g. 
> freeing /opt).
> Since SUNWmlib gets installed on /opt per default I wanna remove
> it. 

% du -sh /opt/SUNWmlib
  86K   /opt/SUNWmlib
% 

I'm not sure 86KB of disk space (consisting of a handful of symlinks)
is really worth the effort.

> I think, this should have no impact at all, because no package has
> it listed in its depend file.

Unfortunately, not every dependency that's important for proper
operation of the software is listed in the 'depend' file.  Yes, that's
a failing on our part, but the truth is that if you wander outside the
confines of the supported metaclusters, and you don't take the time to
analyze the software itself carefully, it's all too easy to hurt
yourself.

Yes, it should be otherwise.  It should be possible to remove packages
and have the system tell you whether that's a safe thing to do.

Also, you can't just remove the /opt/SUNWmlib directory without
removing the SUNWmlib package, and that *is* required by other
software.  Just do an ldd on some applications, and you'll see well
over a hundred that are linked to it.

> But knowing this, the next question comes into mind: What is the
> purpose of SUNWmlib? Is it a kind of backward compat package or
> optional performance related package?

The links in /opt are for backward compatibility with applications
that may have been linked against these libraries before they were
moved to /usr/lib.

-- 
James Carlson, KISS Network                    <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677

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