Yesterday I deployed a new server running CentOS 5.3 only to find common programs like "locate" and "wget" no longer included by default.

I installed them through yum, but I would like to know why they are missing in the first place. Anyone have an idea?

We try to build images with an emphasis on just what is needed to get booted; not everyone needs locate or wget (I know, sounds silly). I spent a couple hours sitting in my CentOS chroot purging things that didn't break the system to remove.

I thought I included wget in the last round. I'll have to check again. I know I made a point of including nano, the full version of vim, and a few other things that we get commonly requested.

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Disclaimer: I am no longer employed by Linode; opinions are my own alone.

Cool. Just don't take out yum

Actually, I like how stripped down it is--on previous versions I've spent some time trying to get it down to bare minimum myself. I was very pleased when I couldn't find much of anything I could take out. I'd much rather have a short list of things I know I need to add when setting up a new image, than go through and try to strip it down.

FWIW, my list is:
wget
sudo
man
mlocate
vixie-cron

Didn't there used to be a "helper" setting that disabled locate from running, to stop all the I/O contention?

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Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

I think it's still there. I deleted the daily cron task & just update it weekly.