lfs-book/chapter06/strippingagain.xml

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  "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
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<sect1 id="ch-system-strippingagain">
  <?dbhtml filename="strippingagain.html"?>

  <title>Stripping Again</title>

  <para>If the intended user is not a programmer and does not plan to do
  any debugging on the system software, the system size can be decreased
  by about 90 MB by removing the debugging symbols from binaries and
  libraries. This causes no inconvenience other than not being able to
  debug the software fully anymore.</para>

  <para>Most people who use the command mentioned below do not
  experience any difficulties. However, it is easy to make a typo and
  render the new system unusable, so before running the
  <command>strip</command> command, it is a good idea to make a
  backup of the LFS system in its current state.</para>

  <para>Before performing the stripping, take special care to ensure that
  none of the binaries that are about to be stripped are running. If
  unsure whether the user entered chroot with the command given in
  <xref linkend="ch-system-chroot" role=","/> first exit from
  chroot:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>logout</userinput></screen>

  <para>Then reenter it with:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>chroot $LFS /tools/bin/env -i \
    HOME=/root TERM=$TERM PS1='\u:\w\$ ' \
    PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin \
    /tools/bin/bash --login</userinput></screen>

  <para>Now the binaries and libraries can be safely stripped:</para>

<screen><userinput>/tools/bin/find /{,usr/}{bin,lib,sbin} -type f \
  -exec /tools/bin/strip --strip-debug '{}' ';'</userinput></screen>

  <para>A large number of files will be reported as having their file
  format not recognized. These warnings can be safely ignored. These
  warnings indicate that those files are scripts instead of
  binaries.</para>

  <para>If disk space is very tight, the
  <parameter>--strip-all</parameter> option can be used on the binaries
  in <filename class="directory">/{,usr/}{bin,sbin}</filename> to gain
  several more megabytes. Do not use this option on libraries&mdash;they will
  be destroyed.</para>

</sect1>