perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Brian Candler <>]

I've just been installing the "perfsonar-tools" package from the 
perfsonar-jessie-release repository, on a headless server.

I found that by default it wants to pull in a metric tonne of 
dependencies, including much of X11.

0 to upgrade, 182 to newly install, 0 to remove and 7 not to upgrade.
Need to get 52.9 MB/53.0 MB of archives.
After this operation, 329 MB of additional disk space will be used.

...and this is not counting the bwctl/owamp/iperf/nuttcp packages which 
I already had installed!

Even if I add "--no-install-recommends" I get 123 new packages including 
some of X11 core:

# apt-get install perfsonar-tools --no-install-recommends
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  aglfn fontconfig fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core gnuplot 
gnuplot-tex gnuplot5-data
  gnuplot5-qt ieee-data libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libavahi-client3 
libavahi-common-data
  libavahi-common3 libcairo2 libcups2 libdatrie1 libdrm-amdgpu1 
libdrm-nouveau2 libegl1-mesa
  libevdev2 libfontconfig1 libgbm1 libgd3 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 
libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common
  libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglapi-mesa libgraphite2-3 
libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-common
  libgudev-1.0-0 libharfbuzz0b libice6 libinput10 libjbig0 
libjpeg-turbo8 libjpeg8 libllvm3.8
  libmtdev1 libnotify4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 
libpangoft2-1.0-0 libpcre16-3
  libpixman-1-0 libpq5 libproxy1v5 libqt5core5a libqt5dbus5 libqt5gui5 
libqt5network5
  libqt5printsupport5 libqt5svg5 libqt5widgets5 libsm6 libthai-data 
libthai0 libtiff5 libvpx3
  libwacom-common libwacom2 libwayland-client0 libwayland-server0 
libwxbase3.0-0v5
  libwxgtk3.0-0v5 libx11-xcb1 libxcb-dri2-0 libxcb-dri3-0 libxcb-glx0 
libxcb-icccm4
  libxcb-image0 libxcb-keysyms1 libxcb-present0 libxcb-randr0 
libxcb-render-util0
  libxcb-render0 libxcb-shape0 libxcb-shm0 libxcb-sync1 libxcb-util1 
libxcb-xfixes0
  libxcb-xkb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxfixes3 libxi6 
libxinerama1
  libxkbcommon-x11-0 libxkbcommon0 libxpm4 libxrandr2 libxrender1 
libxshmfence1 libxxf86vm1
  paris-traceroute perfsonar-common pscheduler-core python-dateutil 
python-dnspython
  python-funcsigs python-functools32 python-ipaddr python-isodate 
python-jsonschema
  python-mock python-netaddr python-netifaces python-ntplib python-pbr 
python-pscheduler
  python-psycopg2 python-radix python-requests python-subprocess32 
python-tz python-tzlocal
  python-urllib3 shared-mime-info x11-common
0 to upgrade, 123 to newly install, 0 to remove and 7 not to upgrade.
Need to get 38.1 MB/38.3 MB of archives.
After this operation, 244 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Now, I think it's because pscheduler-core has a hard dependency on gnuplot:

Package: pscheduler-core
Version: 1.0.0.2-1
Architecture: all
Maintainer: Valentin Vidic 
<>
Installed-Size: 120
Depends: python-pscheduler, python-tz, curl, gnuplot

Which in turn depends on:

Depends: gnuplot5-qt | gnuplot5-x11 | gnuplot5-nox

So I was able to reduce the set of dependencies somewhat by first doing 
"apt-get install gnuplot5-nox --no-install-recommends", which brings in 
these packages:

  aglfn fontconfig fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core gnuplot-tex 
gnuplot5-data gnuplot5-nox
  libcairo2 libdatrie1 libfontconfig1 libgd3 libgraphite2-3 
libharfbuzz0b libjbig0
  libjpeg-turbo8 libjpeg8 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 
libpangoft2-1.0-0 libpixman-1-0
  libthai-data libthai0 libtiff5 libvpx3 libxcb-render0 libxcb-shm0 
libxpm4 libxrender1
0 to upgrade, 28 to newly install, 0 to remove and 7 not to upgrade.
Need to get 4,801 kB of archives.
After this operation, 15.6 MB of additional disk space will be used.

And then installing perfsonar-tools only pulls in these:

  gnuplot ieee-data libpq5 paris-traceroute perfsonar-common 
perfsonar-tools pscheduler-core
  python-dateutil python-dnspython python-egenix-mxdatetime 
python-egenix-mxtools
  python-funcsigs python-functools32 python-ipaddr python-isodate 
python-jsonschema
  python-mock python-ndg-httpsclient python-netaddr python-netifaces 
python-ntplib python-pbr
  python-pscheduler python-psycopg2 python-radix python-requests 
python-subprocess32
  python-tz python-tzlocal python-urllib3
0 to upgrade, 30 to newly install, 0 to remove and 7 not to upgrade.
Need to get 1,969 kB/2,107 kB of archives.
After this operation, 11.0 MB of additional disk space will be used.

However, that's still a bunch of graphics and font libraries that I 
don't want on a server, if all it's doing is responding to iperf and 
owamp tests.

I was just wondering why there is this hard dependency on gnuplot, and 
whether it could perhaps be moved to "recommends" instead?  is gnuplot 
actually required for the tests to work?

Thanks,

Brian Candler.