Most innocuous package to install to test yum?

Question

I'm trying to test yum is working in CentOS from a local repo. To do this I need a package that:

1. Isn't already installed with standard OS install
2. Is small in size
3. Has few or no dependencies
4. Doesn't affect everyday operation of OS or perform anything in the background
5. Is available in the standard repo

So what package could I yum that would meet these criteria?

Answer 1

edit

This package is not available in the basic repo. but in the forge repo. Though I still think it's a very good package

edit

You could just install a devel package like openssl-devel or glibc-devel those package only include header and will not hurt

I would install htop it's a simple binary that enhanced the top command experience by 1000 it's less than 1MB and all dependency should be already on your system.

Answer 2

Well, the installed size of dos2unix is 18K. It has no additional dependencies, affects nothing by itself, and is available in the standard repos. It is a little utility used to convert line endings CRLF to LF.

Answer 3

This should work on anything that is EL5 (CentOS5, RHEL5, etc) or newer. The package may be on older versions but I haven't checked. The mt-st package for checking tape drive device status is very small and in the base repository like you are requesting.

[root@testbox ~]# yum info mt-st

Available Packages
Name        : mt-st
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 1.1
Release     : 5.el6
Size        : 41 k
Repo        : base
Summary     : Tool for controlling tape drives
URL         : ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/backup
License     : GPL+
Description : The mt-st package contains the mt and st tape drive management
            : programs. Mt (for magnetic tape drives) and st (for SCSI tape devices)
            : can control rewinding, ejecting, skipping files and blocks and more.
            :
            : Install mt-st if you need a tool to  manage tape drives.

Its dependencies are only things that you would be hard-pressed to live without:

[root@testbox~]# repoquery --requires --recursive mt-st
/bin/bash
/bin/sh
chkconfig
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.7)(64bit)
rtld(GNU_HASH)

[root@testbox~]# repoquery --requires --resolve --recursive mt-st
mt-st-0:1.1-5.el6.x86_64
glibc-0:2.12-1.149.el6.i686
bash-0:4.1.2-29.el6.x86_64
chkconfig-0:1.3.49.3-2.el6_4.1.x86_64
glibc-0:2.12-1.149.el6_6.7.x86_64

Answer 4

Some development package? Those just install header files, which don't do anything unless you try to actively use them.

Some devel packages are quite big though. (E.g., installing the Linux kernel headers is going to be quite big!) Try something like, say, zlib-devel?

Answer 5

A documentation package can probably meet your requirements.

An example in Debian: https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/doc/sysadmin-guide

Answer 6

Installing a shell could help. They usually require packages that are already present.