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I want to install ubuntu-minimal. I can't see coreutils as a dependency, although there are still plenty of other packages that ubuntu-minimal depends on. Will I have to install it seperately or is it a dependency of one of these other packages in ubuntu-minimal? If so, which one?

2 Answers 2

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The coreutils is marked Essential: yes, so it's always included in an installation, and dpkg will warn you in a rather non-ignorable way if you try to remove it. Packages do not have to declare dependencies on essential packages, unless they need a particular version (for example, dpkg (another essential package) depends on coreutils (>= 5.93-1) in Ubuntu 10.04).

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  • where can I see a list of essential packages?
    – oadams
    Nov 17, 2010 at 1:18
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    @alphomega: dpkg-query -f '${package}: ${essential}\n' --show | sed -ne 's/: yes$//p' or aptitude search '?essential' Nov 17, 2010 at 19:11
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It's a dependency of both the kernel and dpkg so I'm fairly certain it'll be on ubuntu-minimal.

To see essential packages, run this:

aptitude search '~E'

You'll see something like this:

i A apt - Advanced front-end for dpkg    
i  base-files - Debian base system miscellaneous files
i  base-passwd - Debian base system master password and group files
i  bash - The GNU Bourne Again SHell
i  bsdutils - Basic utilities from 4.4BSD-Lite
i  coreutils - GNU core utilities
i  dash - POSIX-compliant shell
i  debianutils - Miscellaneous utilities specific to Debian
i A diffutils - File comparison utilities
i  dpkg - Debian package management system
i  e2fsprogs - ext2/ext3/ext4 file system utilities
i  findutils - utilities for finding files--find, xargs
i  grep - GNU grep, egrep and fgrep
i  gzip - GNU compression utilities
i  hostname - utility to set/show the host name or domain name
i  login - system login tools
i  mount - Tools for mounting and manipulating filesystems
i  ncurses-base - basic terminal type definitions
i  ncurses-bin - terminal-related programs and man pages
i  perl-base - minimal Perl system
i  python-minimal - minimal subset of the Python language (default version)
i  sed - The GNU sed stream editor
i  tar - GNU version of the tar archiving utility
i  util-linux - Miscellaneous system utilities
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  • Thanks :), now I don't know who to award the answer to.
    – oadams
    Nov 17, 2010 at 1:43

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