I'm trying to decrease a Linux image running SuSE, and thought about running strip on all of the system's executables. Even though I may not re-gain much disk space this way, would there be any harm in doing so?
What harm would there be in running strip on all files?
linux;suse;elf;strip
It's not the case for Linux (just checked...), but on other systems (such as BSDs, e.g., OSX) doing this will remove any setuid/setgid permissions as a side-effect.  Also (still looking at OSX), the ownership of the file may change (to the user doing the writing).For Linux, I recall that early on, stripping a shared library would prevent linking to it.  That is not a problem now, though as the Program Library HOWTO notes, it will make debuggers not useful.  It prevents linking to static libraries.Further reading:24.14 Don't Use strip Carelessly  (Unix Power Tools)How do I strip local symbols from linux kernel module without breaking it?What Linux and Solaris can learn from each other