Slimming Down Raspbian Stretch Lite

raspbian-stretch-lite-slimdown.md

Slimming Down Raspbian Stretch Lite

Notes for slimming down a fresh installation of Raspbian Stretch Lite. This guide does not strip Raspbian of basic functionality such as Bluetooth and mDNS.

Instructions

Install a fresh Raspbian Stretch Lite image into the SD card (source).

$ unzip -p 2018-04-18-raspbian-stretch-lite.zip | dd bs=4M of=/dev/sdX conv=fsync
$ sync

Configure headless SSH and Wi-Fi (if necessary) before starting the SD card (source).

$ mount /dev/sdX /media
$ :> /media/ssh
$ cat > /media/wpa_supplicant.conf <<"EOF"
country=GB
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
    ssid="YOUR_SSID"
    psk="YOUR_PSK"
}
EOF
$ umount /media
$ sync

Configure apt so that it does not install additional packages (source).

$ cat > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/80noadditional <<"EOF"
APT::Install-Recommends "0";
APT::Install-Suggests "0";
EOF

Update Raspbian in the freshly installed system.

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get dist-upgrade
$ reboot

Mark all libraries as autoinstalled, so they are autoremoved when no longer required.

$ dpkg-query -Wf '${binary:Package}\n' 'lib*[!raspberrypi-bin]' | xargs apt-mark auto

Remove non-critical packages.

$ xargs apt-get purge <<"EOF"
aptitude aptitude-common apt-listchanges apt-utils bash-completion blends-tasks build-essential
bzip2 cifs-utils console-setup console-setup-linux cpp debconf-i18n dmidecode dosfstools
dpkg-dev ed gcc gcc-4.6-base gcc-4.7-base gcc-4.8-base gcc-4.9-base gcc-5-base gcc-6 gdb
geoip-database gettext-base groff-base hardlink htop info install-info iptables iputils-ping
isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common kbd keyboard-configuration less libc-l10n libglib2.0-data
liblocale-gettext-perl libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtext-wrapi18n-perl locales
logrotate luajit make manpages manpages-dev mime-support mountall ncdu netcat-openbsd
netcat-traditional net-tools nfs-common perl plymouth python rpcbind rsync rsyslog samba-common
sgml-base shared-mime-info strace tasksel tasksel-data tcpd traceroute triggerhappy unzip
usb-modeswitch usb-modeswitch-data usbutils v4l-utils vim-common vim-tiny wget xauth
xdg-user-dirs xxd xz-utils zlib1g-dev
EOF

Remove all packages that were automatically installed and are no longer required.

$ apt-get autoremove --purge

Optionals

Configure dpkg so that it does not install documentation in packages (source).

$ cat > /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/nodoc <<"EOF"
path-exclude /usr/share/doc/*
path-include /usr/share/doc/*/copyright
path-exclude /usr/share/man/*
path-exclude /usr/share/groff/*
path-exclude /usr/share/info/*
path-exclude /usr/share/lintian/*
path-exclude /usr/share/linda/*
EOF

Configure dpkg so that it does not install locales in packages.

$ cat > /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/nolocale <<"EOF"
path-exclude /usr/share/locale/*
EOF

Remove documentation from already installed packages (source).

$ find /usr/share/doc -depth -type f ! -name copyright | xargs rm
$ find /usr/share/doc -empty | xargs rmdir
$ rm -rf /usr/share/man/* /usr/share/groff/* /usr/share/info/*
$ rm -rf /usr/share/lintian/* /usr/share/linda/* /var/cache/man/*

Remove locales from already installed packages.

$ rm -rf /usr/share/locale/*

Remove log files.

$ rm -f /var/log/{auth,boot,bootstrap,daemon,kern}.log
$ rm -f /var/log/{debug,dmesg,messages,syslog}

Empty the Message-Of-The-Day file.

$ :> /etc/motd

Generate a unique hostname based on MAC address during boot.

$ cat > /etc/systemd/system/mac-hostname.service <<"EOF"
[Unit]
Description=MAC-based hostname
DefaultDependencies=no
After=sysinit.target local-fs.target
Before=basic.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c '\
    _HOSTNAME=$(sed "s/^.*macaddr=\\([0-9A-F:]*\\) .*$/\\1/;s/://g;s/\\(.*\\)/rpi-\\L\\1/" /proc/cmdline); \
    if [ "$_HOSTNAME" ]; then \
        _CURRENT_HOSTNAME=$(cat /etc/hostname | tr -d " \\t\\n\\r"); \
        if [ "$_HOSTNAME" != "$_CURRENT_HOSTNAME" ]; then \
            echo "Setting MAC-based hostname to <$_HOSTNAME>"; \
            echo "$_HOSTNAME" > /etc/hostname; \
            sed -i "s/127.0.1.1.*$_CURRENT_HOSTNAME/127.0.1.1\\t$_HOSTNAME/g" /etc/hosts; \
            /bin/hostname -b -F /etc/hostname; \
        fi; \
    fi'

[Install]
WantedBy=basic.target
EOF
$ systemctl enable mac-hostname.service
$ reboot

Disable onboard Bluetooth device (RPI0W, RPI3).

$ echo dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt >> /boot/config.txt
$ systemctl disable hciuart
$ apt-get purge bluez bluez-firmware pi-bluetooth  # if BT is not needed again

References

@hhromic thank you so much for sharing this tutorial. May I ask if after such changes the USB devices will continue to work?
More generally, would you recommend these changes as a "base" for a personal MAME project? Thank you so much!