[Bug 1096232] [NEW] ubuntu-minimal: Remove dependency on ureadahead

[Sebastian Flothow]

Public bug reported:

ubuntu-minimal should not depend on ureadahead.

Reason #1, on theoretical grounds: ubuntu-minimal is supposed to pull in
the minimal functioning system. ureadahead is not required for a
functioning system. Therefore, ubuntu-minimal should not depend on
ureadahead.

Reason #2, on practical grounds: ureadahead does have some drawbacks
(such as not working and causing error messages when /var is on a
separate partition, or actually increasing boot time), and on servers,
which are rarely rebooted, it's not of much use anyway. Therefore, I
(and presumably others) would prefer to remove it, but this requires
removing ubuntu-minimal as well, which the latter's package description
recommends against.  Removing the dependency would allow for a clean
removal of readahead while keeping ubuntu-minimal.

Please note that I'm not opposed to ureadhead per se – I do recognize
that it's likely to be beneficial to the majority of systems, and I'm
fine with having it installed by default; I just want to be able to
uninstall it without affecting other packages.

Perhaps instead of having a hard dependency, ubuntu-minimal could
recommend or suggest ureadahead? Or maybe the dependency should be moved
to ubuntu-desktop (or some related package), since desktop systems are
most likely to benefit from it, and probably also most likely to have
/var on the root partition.

For the record, I'm running Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS, but according to
http://packages.ubuntu.com/raring/ubuntu-minimal, the dependency still
exists in raring.

** Affects: ureadahead (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1096232

Title:
  ubuntu-minimal: Remove dependency on ureadahead

Status in “ureadahead” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  ubuntu-minimal should not depend on ureadahead.

  Reason #1, on theoretical grounds: ubuntu-minimal is supposed to pull
  in the minimal functioning system. ureadahead is not required for a
  functioning system. Therefore, ubuntu-minimal should not depend on
  ureadahead.

  Reason #2, on practical grounds: ureadahead does have some drawbacks
  (such as not working and causing error messages when /var is on a
  separate partition, or actually increasing boot time), and on servers,
  which are rarely rebooted, it's not of much use anyway. Therefore, I
  (and presumably others) would prefer to remove it, but this requires
  removing ubuntu-minimal as well, which the latter's package
  description recommends against.  Removing the dependency would allow
  for a clean removal of readahead while keeping ubuntu-minimal.

  Please note that I'm not opposed to ureadhead per se – I do recognize
  that it's likely to be beneficial to the majority of systems, and I'm
  fine with having it installed by default; I just want to be able to
  uninstall it without affecting other packages.

  Perhaps instead of having a hard dependency, ubuntu-minimal could
  recommend or suggest ureadahead? Or maybe the dependency should be
  moved to ubuntu-desktop (or some related package), since desktop
  systems are most likely to benefit from it, and probably also most
  likely to have /var on the root partition.

  For the record, I'm running Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS, but according to
  http://packages.ubuntu.com/raring/ubuntu-minimal, the dependency still
  exists in raring.

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