Unwanted Packages (RPM’s)
One of the most important step in securing a Linux system know the primary function or role of the Linux server. Having a detailed knowledge of your system & what is on the system, will ensure you to understand what needs to be secured on the server. Therefore, it is very critical to look at the default list of software packages and remove unneeded packages or packages that don’t comply with your security policy. If you do that you will have less packages to worry about when security alerts and patches are released.
One of the first action items should be to create a Linux image that only contains RPMs needed by the applications and needed for maintenance and troubleshooting purposes. A good approach is to start with a minimum list of RPMs and then add packages as needed. It may be time-consuming but it’s worth the efforts.
To get a list of all installed RPMs you can use the following command:
rpm -qa
If you want to know more about a particular RPM, run:
rpm -qi
To check for and report potential conflicts and dependencies for deleting a RPM, run:
rpm -e –test
