Debian Configuration :: Removing List Of Unwanted Packages
May 5, 2011
I have a fresh Debian install, since this install was on a desktop, I had an internet connection and didn't notice (it was late, I was half asleep) I opted to download a whole load of packages I didn't really need. I thought all was doomed until I remembered that I have done another Debian install but a week ago on a laptop, which has a nice clean install without all the bloat.
So I ran dpkg --get-selections > selections
and had it sent to my new desktop installation.
Now if I run dpkg --set-selections < selections followed by dselect-upgrade nothing happens. I assume this is because the smaller list contains all the packages 'to be installed' which already are, and all the missing packages are not being purged. Do I need to explicitly add all the packages I want to purge to the 'selection' list or is there a better way of doing it?
I've just installed Squeeze with KDE. I was wondering what is the best way to remove some unwanted apps without breaking everything (I want to get rid of Kopete and a few other apps like Dragon Player as I don't use them)? I tried to: apt-get remove kopete but it said it wanted to remove a whole bunch of other stuff as well. (I'm a recent Fedora convert).
I am using ubuntu 10.04 and I would like to keep only the main menu,and i have to disable all the other options including recovery and memtest in the GRUB menu..How to do this..?
I have just installed Debian Lenny and was trying to upgrade the installed packages from the packages.debian.org site. when i asked synaptic to add the downloaded packages the would not appear, but when i checked the .xsessions file there are entries saying that the packages were being ingnored because they were either different versions, the MD5 did not match or even "can't find pkg". i have to use the local library to download the packages because i dont have an internet connection at home.
In trying to get something else working, I installed a newer version of the kernel from backports (I'm on 2.6.26 lenny and the backport kernel is 2.6.32). That failed, so I want to remove the backport kernel completely.
I tried:
Code:
and got:
Code:
Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]
I don't really understand how these metapackages work and I don't want to accidentally remove my currently-working kernel.
What's the correct way to remove all packages related to the backports kernel and leave the existing lenny ones alone?
I have an issue with packages. When I try to install any package then I receive error like this one below. e.g. install Lynx:
Code: # apt-get -f install lynx Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libperl5.10: Depends: perl-base (= 5.10.0-19lenny3) but 5.10.0-19lenny2 is to be installed libsnmp15: Depends: libsnmp-base (>= 5.4.1~dfsg-12) but it is not going to be installed lynx: Depends: lynx-cur (>= 2.8.7dev9-2.1) but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
So I decided to remove libperl5.10 which apparently mess. But its not that easy, just take a look:
Code: # apt-get --purge remove libperl5.10 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libsnmp15: Depends: libsnmp-base (>= 5.4.1~dfsg-12) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libperl5.10 (>= 5.10.0) but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). ...and now I don't know what to do ?
I am new and recently almost one month back installed debian linux stable 8.2 came from windows. Today I upgrade my debian stable 8.2 to testing and everything works fine. Just one thing is that I checked kernel and find :
uname -r
4.2.0-1-amd64
dpkg --list | grep linux-image
ii linux-image-3.16.0-4-amd64 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u5 amd64 Linux 3.16 for 64-bit PCs ii linux-image-4.2.0-1-amd64 4.2.3-2 amd64 Linux 4.2 for 64-bit PCs ii linux-image-amd64 4.2+68 amd64 Linux for 64-bit PCs (meta-package)
I am first time removing old kernel so cant take risk from searching the solution from google so come here, what and how to remove that includes everything like kernel image and other old kernel files not needed.
One more thing I just realised and saw on details in settings gnome that
Base : Debian GNU/Linux stretch/sid 64-bit
Is this right as it says sid in the line but i just changed my sources.list to testing only and then aptitude upgrade and full-upgrade then just.
How do you list only installed packages that were not installed automatically? I see in aptitude that it will list whether they were installed automatically or not, but it is hard to find them because the are a lot more installed automatically than non-automatically.
I can't remember if branch is the correct term but I am talking stable, testing or unstable.
i have looked through the dpkg and aptitude man pages but can't seem to find if there is a way to search which packages on the system are installed from a specific branch. Is there a way to do this?
I fruitlessly tried to understand the mechanism of package clean in Debian. There are two types of packages: the one that are essential for user and dependencies of these packages. How could I found where the list of essential packages is kept in Debian? (in Gentoo it is called world-file) dkpg -l shows me the list of all packages installed.
I have had this problem repeatedly with aptitude recently. I run Debian Squeeze but in a somewhat unusual fashion - I create a custom live image using the builder on the Debian Live website and then run the live image in persistent mode off a flash drive. For all intents and purposes this has never behaved any differently from a standard Debian install and has given me a great deal of flexibility and power, for which I'm grateful.
However there's been one strange phenomenon that keeps occurring. After a certain point - not before - aptitude stops removing dependencies when I remove packages, though in the ncurses interface the option is shown as switched on (and my .aptitude/config file does not switch it off, nor does any other configuration file that I can find, though maybe I'm missing something). This occurs even in the case of dependencies which I know cannot be depended upon by any other package. e.g. the e17 package in unstable brings in libecore, libevas etc. which are depended on only by e17 as I have no other Enlightenment packages installed. But removing e17 removes only the e17 package and not the dependencies.
The other odd thing is that this does not occur at first. Aptitude works fine for a while on a clean system. At some point though it simply changes in behaviour.
I have realized that in not installing suggested packages I've missed out on a ton of doc files, which would really come in handy while I'm away from internet access.
Is there a way take a list of currently installed packages and find out which of them have doc packages available? Possibly install them in a single step? I have been playing around with aptitude and apt-rdepends, but I'm not quite sure how to go about this. Somehow take a list of installed packages, run it through an apt-cache search, and end up with a list of -doc packages to install? My bash-fu isn't the greatest, and I suppose this could be a bad idea to begin with.
I'm a fresh user of Debian 6 64 Bit. I'm trying to install wine on it to run bluestacks. URL... but when I use the following command, it can't seem to fetch some files/packages. I have these as my sources list at the moment.
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free
I have a system that will not boot as /usr has been destroyed and I would like to get a list of installed packages before re-installing. I know that it's possible to get this using dpkg or apt, but I cannot run those.
Where in the filesystem is this information stored and what's the best way to get a list of installed apps from the files?
I have a dead system that was running Debian Linux (lenny). I can boot into emergency mode, but nothing else. I will likely have to reinstall Debian. I've read lots of things online about how to get a list of currently installed packages. Which is fine and dandy if the system is working and I can log into it. I'm basically wanting to extract such a list from a hard drive containing an installation I can't log into normally. I can access the filesystem just fine, and nothing related to aptitude has been damaged.
I'm not sure if this is a bug in Squeeze beta 2 or if it's something I've overlooked. I have a Maxtor 250 GB external USB drive that I use for backups. It gets auto-mounted fine, always in the same place, and from my normal user account I can write to it, even delete directories on it if I want to. But when, from Gnome, I select the "Safely remove" option, I get an error to the effect that it can't stop the device. The weird thing is that the thing actually *is* unmounted. I've checked the mount point and it's no longer there.Is there some package I maybe should've installed but haven't? I'm not really worried about data loss, since I'm sure the drive wouldn't unmount unless it was properly synched; it's just the error message that bugs me.
In an attempt to minimize my system when I mark for removal libcups2 using synaptic it asks to install 7 not authenticated packages, however if I choose mark for complete removal it asks to install the same 7 packages and remove every single installed package from epiphany to gimp to zenmap. Any ideas as to whats going on with that?
I am an old Debian user, ho just reinstalled it again to see how it evolved since my las version (3.2). I am sharing it with Arch Linux, And decided to let bot of them. I am using GDM compiled and configured in Arch, and removed GDM2 from Debian (i just like the easy menu.list from the old GDM). The problem is that when i update the kernel, it didn't fing GDM and drops an error message. I tried removing the distro-preconfigured Kernels, as i compiled my own 3.0.0-rc2 Kerenel, but i cant delete the previous ones. Now everytime i do an install or uptgrade, apt-get drops wastes some time, and drops an error message:
[code]...
What can i do? i googled some similar errors, but where just messed up mirror.lists, or similar, i know it isnt the cause of fail.
Can I keep the old 32bit_testing /home with all the hidden directories there when moving to 64bit_testing?
Is there a way to export a list of all installed packages in aptitude or synaptic, so that when reinstalling, it can be easily imported? (reinstalling the same system)
After doing this I rebooted my server (a few days later). After rebooting I had no ipv4. I tried statically assigning IP addresses to no avail. Ran ifconfig eth0 down/up which got me nowhere. Eventually decided to ask "Okay, what changed". Started installing packages that were autoremoved. Had to install from the apt cache using dpkg. First one I tried was sendmail-base. Then did ifconfig eth0 down/up, which gave me networking back.
I have checked the dependencies for sendmail-base and I see nothing that would relate to networking, so I'm really confused on why this happened. I had backups of the server so I went a week back and noticed sendmail-base was installed at that time. So I went a day back, where sendmail-base wasn't installed, and installed it. Sure enough it brought back networking. I'm just stating this because it is more proof that sendmail-base was the missing component.
I've got an 8-disk raid-5 setup, and one of the disks failed. I shut the system down, replaced it, and powered the box back on again. Then, I made a catastrophic mistake; I 'failed' and removed the wrong disk (should have been sdj1, and I typed sdk1 by accident). I tried to re-add sdk1 back to the raid array, but it got listed as 'spare'. My raid array is off-line, since I now have 2 disks unavailable.
I know that the data still exists on sdk1, is there any way I can get the raid array to recognise the fact that it's a valid part of the array, and not a spare disk? At least if I can do that, I'll have a degraded but accessible array, and then I can rebuild the array on the properly replaced disk.
I'm currently dual-booting Squeeze & Windows XP on a machine i use frequently.
In my experience on the desktop, i now see no reason to have Windows XP as a boot option, & wanted to try & avoid a full re-installation of Debian in order to remove XP (merging it's partition with / ).
I have a checklist that i put together, but wanted to be sure this was all correct before going forward.
1. Perform full back-up of all data.
2. Boot into Debian, through GUI -
System Tools > Disk Utility
- Select HDD (80GB Hard Disk) - Select windows partition ( /dev/sda1 ) - Format /dev/sda1 to Ext4 Filsystem
3. Boot Live CD
- Use gParted to extend /dev/sda2 (was 38GB, will extend to 78GB)
4. Remove XP from the boot menu.
( Note: My ~ folder is on the same physical drive as / (same volume), but i actually store all Media on a separate physical drive which is formatted in NTFS. I plan on reinstalling XP using a virtual hard disk, & sharing that with the virtual machine.Here is a screenshot of my Disk Utility - [URL]
I upgraded my dedicated server using the do-release-upgrade command, and it seems to have installed many extra packages I do not require. This is a headless server in a datacentre, yet the upgrade caused me to install GUI packages I do not need. Is there a way to quickly remove all but the default server packages?
I have a Debian testing system on a laptop that used to have Windows 8 on it. I kept the EFI boatloader and its partition, but now every time the system boots, it first tries to boot into Windows (which isn't there anymore). Removing /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft just leads to an error message when booting, with some component of Windows still trying to load and not finding those files.
The workaround for now is to go into the UEFI boot menu on every boot and selecting the "debian" entry, which works but is a bit cumbersome.How can I get rid of the Microsoft loader completely? I find a lot about repairing or re-adding the Windows bootloader, but nothing about removing it.
I'm building a Debian Live system, [URL], and I've pared it down to a very light distro. It is using the IceWM, has the basic linux commands, and very very little else.
When I run "top" and "ps aux", I see that I have multiple terminals and logins waiting to be used. It's a small amount, but I'd like to make that RAM usable elsewhere. The indicated commands are: "/bin/login -f" and "-bash", and I have one of each associated with each tty[1-7]. I may want to keep tty1 and tty2, just in case, but I can't imagine wanting 3-7.
So, what I'm looking for is a way to stop tty[3-7] from even starting in the first place.
I saw on one forum the suggestion of modifying the /etc/init/tty[1-7].conf files, but these files aren't present, I presume because it's a "Live" system.
I just did an update on my Debian system and it was very long. I'd like to know now, after the upgrades have already been applied, which packages were upgraded and which were not.
On a fresh installed Debian8.1 whit Mate Desktop. I start Synaptic. Lets show the Source, all empty. I can't install or remove anything. Whats happens?
I have tried install libsub-install-perl and libparams-util-perl but get Error. Now I want remove it from the list when I tried apt-get upgrade. Where I can remove from this entries?
