Maybe this will help, I loosly follow the instructions contained in this document <a href="
http://developer.arsdigita.com/doc/install-guide/redhat.html">
http://developer.arsdigita.com/doc/install-guide/redhat.html</a> when installing Redhat, specifically I currently use the Redhat 7.1 distro, the only package I add to those recommended in this document is the "Image Manipulation" package.
<p>You basically get a basic environment with all advance features (web server, RDBMS, advanced networking) still needing to be installed, exactly what we need for setting up OpenACS.
<p>This has proven useful to me in that unintended packages don't end up getting installed and causing me more problems later.
