lfs-book/chapter06/strippingagain.xml

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<sect1 id="ch-system-strippingagain">
<title>Stripping Again</title>
<?dbhtml filename="strippingagain.html"?>

<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 200 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 current situation.</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><userinput>logout</userinput></screen>

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

<screen><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>