Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 5:32 AM, Daniel Burrows dburr...@debian.org wrote: On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 09:54:00AM -0800, Michael M. Moore mich...@writemoore.net was heard to say: The thing is I was planning on keeping gdm, though I guess I could switch to xdm, or do without a display manager. But gdm, according to aptitude, shouldn't require nautilus. It shouldn't even require gnome-session, just one of gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. I have Openbox and xterm installed, so I should be covered there, right? Then you need to remove gnome-session and replace it with something else. That gets to the heart of my confusion about how this works, because I didn't *need* a replacement for gnome-session -- I already had packages installed that satisfied that requirement. aptitude conservatively assumes that if A depends on B, that you might want B because of A. That's true even if the same dependency could be satisfied by another package -- otherwise aptitude would be in the business of guessing which alternative not to delete. :-) To expand upon this, I believe the OP's situation is some behaviour I've also seen, which seemed odd until I thought about it and couldn't actually come up with a better way: Assume you have aptitude set not to install recommends automatically. 1) Install package A, which recommends package B. 2) Install package C, which depends on package B. B is installed and marked as automatic. 3) Uninstall package C. It seems like B should be uninstalled, because the package which pulled it in automatically has been removed. Actually though, it's kept because there's still a packages recommending it. It's annoying because it means that install and purge are not symmetric operations, and I initially felt (in the case where aptitude is set no to install recommends) that aptitude should remove packages marked as automatically installed when no packages depend on them. However, this could have the effect of causing half the system to be uninstalled when aptitude is changed from 'install recommends' to 'ignore recommends', so I presume that's why it's not done. For all I know there's a setting somewhere to make it do this :P. Nye -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 12:28:38PM +, Aneurin Price aneurin.pr...@gmail.com was heard to say: To expand upon this, I believe the OP's situation is some behaviour I've also seen, which seemed odd until I thought about it and couldn't actually come up with a better way: I'm pretty sure this is different -- I was talking about the situation of A Depends: B | C. People sometimes think that if both B and C are installed, aptitude should guess which one they don't want and remove it. Assume you have aptitude set not to install recommends automatically. How did you do that? Just from the internal options menu? It's annoying because it means that install and purge are not symmetric operations, and I initially felt (in the case where aptitude is set no to install recommends) that aptitude should remove packages marked as automatically installed when no packages depend on them. However, this could have the effect of causing half the system to be uninstalled when aptitude is changed from 'install recommends' to 'ignore recommends', so I presume that's why it's not done. For all I know there's a setting somewhere to make it do this :P. The setting is Aptitude::Keep-Recommends. But in fact, this isn't enabled by default, although passing --without-recommends on the command-line enables it automatically for exactly the reason you pointed out. Another problem is that aptitude now uses apt for the autoremove stuff, so the variables that control that keep changing and I don't always find out / remember the new names. e.g., I just (re)discovered Apt::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant, which has more or less the same effect as Aptitude::Keep-Recommends, and also defaults to true. To make aptitude actually remove recommended packages, you need to set that to false along with Keep-Recommends. Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 05:34:09PM -0800, Michael M. Moore wrote: I thought I had this down by now, but I'm lost. I am in the process of removing much of GNOME, so I removed gnome-desktop-environment, which also removed gnome-core, and a whole bunch of other things. I also removed evolution. But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. Maybe there is no magic package that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? Michael M. aptitude search ~A or aptitude search ~i | grep i A -- http://pobega.wordpress.com http://identica/pobega -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Daniel Burrows dburr...@debian.org wrote: On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 12:28:38PM +, Aneurin Price aneurin.pr...@gmail.com was heard to say: To expand upon this, I believe the OP's situation is some behaviour I've also seen, which seemed odd until I thought about it and couldn't actually come up with a better way: I'm pretty sure this is different -- I was talking about the situation of A Depends: B | C. People sometimes think that if both B and C are installed, aptitude should guess which one they don't want and remove it. Hmm, what happens in the case that exactly one of B or C is marked auto? Assume you have aptitude set not to install recommends automatically. How did you do that? Just from the internal options menu? Yes, as I recall. Maybe tweaked a config file but I guess that's equivalent. It's annoying because it means that install and purge are not symmetric operations, and I initially felt (in the case where aptitude is set no to install recommends) that aptitude should remove packages marked as automatically installed when no packages depend on them. However, this could have the effect of causing half the system to be uninstalled when aptitude is changed from 'install recommends' to 'ignore recommends', so I presume that's why it's not done. For all I know there's a setting somewhere to make it do this :P. The setting is Aptitude::Keep-Recommends. But in fact, this isn't enabled by default, although passing --without-recommends on the command-line enables it automatically for exactly the reason you pointed out. I read that as saying that setting the option from the preferences menu, rather than the command-line, will *not* automatically enable Aptitude::Keep-Recommends. Is that correct? Another problem is that aptitude now uses apt for the autoremove stuff, so the variables that control that keep changing and I don't always find out / remember the new names. e.g., I just (re)discovered Apt::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant, which has more or less the same effect as Aptitude::Keep-Recommends, and also defaults to true. To make aptitude actually remove recommended packages, you need to set that to false along with Keep-Recommends. Possibly this is the root of it then. Either way it's not a big enough issue that I can be bothered to look into it, to be honest. Nye -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 03:42:36PM +, Aneurin Price aneurin.pr...@gmail.com was heard to say: On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Daniel Burrows dburr...@debian.org wrote: On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 12:28:38PM +, Aneurin Price aneurin.pr...@gmail.com was heard to say: To expand upon this, I believe the OP's situation is some behaviour I've also seen, which seemed odd until I thought about it and couldn't actually come up with a better way: I'm pretty sure this is different -- I was talking about the situation of A Depends: B | C. People sometimes think that if both B and C are installed, aptitude should guess which one they don't want and remove it. Hmm, what happens in the case that exactly one of B or C is marked auto? Same thing. The setting is Aptitude::Keep-Recommends. But in fact, this isn't enabled by default, although passing --without-recommends on the command-line enables it automatically for exactly the reason you pointed out. I read that as saying that setting the option from the preferences menu, rather than the command-line, will *not* automatically enable Aptitude::Keep-Recommends. Is that correct? Yep, that's right. The command-line option sets two preferences at once (because the alternative is surprising and usually not what you want). Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:14:37 -0500 Michael Pobega pob...@gmail.com wrote: aptitude search ~A I think you meant: aptitude search ~M aptitude search ~A is used to search within an archive, like unstable, testing, etc. Info below. http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/ch02s03s05.html#searchArchive Graham -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Daniel Burrows dburr...@debian.org wrote: On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 03:42:36PM +, Aneurin Price aneurin.pr...@gmail.com was heard to say: On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Daniel Burrows dburr...@debian.org wrote: On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 12:28:38PM +, Aneurin Price aneurin.pr...@gmail.com was heard to say: To expand upon this, I believe the OP's situation is some behaviour I've also seen, which seemed odd until I thought about it and couldn't actually come up with a better way: I'm pretty sure this is different -- I was talking about the situation of A Depends: B | C. People sometimes think that if both B and C are installed, aptitude should guess which one they don't want and remove it. Hmm, what happens in the case that exactly one of B or C is marked auto? Same thing. I'm pretty sure I know what happened, more or less. I started off by marking gnome-desktop-environment for removal. That in and of itself would have removed, most likely, almost everything I wanted to remove. However, I wanted to keep gdm, so I marked that for installation (that is, gdm was going to be removed, and I told aptitude not to remove it.) That seems to have been enough to cause aptitude to keep a bunch of other things I didn't want to keep, because of the extensive network of depends/recommends. There were packages already (automatically) installed that were recommended by gdm, like gnome-session, even though gdm didn't require them and even though my system would have been fine without them, but because there were already installed, aptitude didn't remove them. And some of those packages had recommends that were not removed, for the same reason. Sort of a cascading effect. What I should have done was let aptitude remove gdm, then reinstalled gdm. That, in the end, is what I did, I just didn't know I should've done that in the first place because aptitude's behavior wasn't what I expected. But it is behavior that makes perfect sense, because as you say, aptitude can't guess which automatically installed packages one doesn't want anymore, when those automatically installed packages are recommended by something one is keeping. The alternative would be to make aptitude more aggressive about removing automatically installed packages that aren't absolutely required by something being held, and that would probably create more severe problems for users. I'd rather have a few unnecessary packages sticking around that aren't doing any harm and that I can always remove when I get around to it, than find I had inadvertently let aptitude wipe out half my system. It's just that, in this case, I actually wanted aptitude to wipe half my system, and I didn't realize I was preventing that by marking a key package as a keeper. Michael M. -- Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. --Thomas Jefferson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Michael M. Moore mich...@writemoore.net wrote: It's just that, in this case, I actually wanted aptitude to wipe half my system, and I didn't realize I was preventing that by marking a key package as a keeper. I solved this problem by doing it this way: I created a few meta-packages that just list the deps that I really want. They go: mrc-desktop mrc-laptop mrc-common Then host machine specific packages that depend on desktop/laptop as appropriate, and the corresponding kernels. Since I happen to use dselect (it was the first one I used and so I've stuck with it)., I would go in and do a normal upgrade. After that was done, and everything was up to date, I would do: [S]elect Scroll down to [Up to date installed packages] and use the _ to schedule it to purge EVERYTHING off of my system. I then find the host specific package and reselect it, thus bringing back in just the stuff I want, and it's deps. Then I do an install. Sometimes I decide I don't want packages any more, so I remove them from my personal list of apps, and away it goes. This is much more interesting after a full install, where a good number of the packages then disappear. This is also useful if I did an apt-get install on a package to try it out. Sometimes I'll pull in a whole bunch of different tools to try things out, then later decide I don't like any of them. Ones I want to keep, I'll add to the appropriate metapackage. Otherwise, they'll get cleaned out the next time I do the above. I assume I could do similar with aptitude, but I've not yet bothered to learn it. I do find that keeping a metapackage around that lists what I want is nice for rebuilds though. I think it's easier than saving off selections. One thing I have run across that you might want to be aware of while you're cleaning out unused packages: Sometimes packages are broken in that multiple packages will use the same config files. If you remove one package, it takes the config files with it, breaking the other. So far the only one I've personally had that happen with is the ldap client stuff, and the bug about that has been open for a few years now. But, I wouldn't be surprised to find other packages might have similar issues. mrc -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 05:17:50PM +, Graham wrote: On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:14:37 -0500 Michael Pobega pob...@gmail.com wrote: aptitude search ~A I think you meant: aptitude search ~M aptitude search ~A is used to search within an archive, like unstable, testing, etc. Info below. http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/ch02s03s05.html#searchArchive Graham I guess I was quoting some outdated docs I found online; either outdated or wrong. Thanks. -- http://pobega.wordpress.com http://identica/pobega -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 05:34:09PM -0800, Michael M. Moore wrote: But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. I've always found that the best way to sort out package dependancies is to use the full-screen mode of aptitude. Pick one of the packages you don't want any more, select it, go down to see what depends on it and choose one of the ones that its installed, etc. Or, you can simple mark the package for removal, which will 'break' the other packages, hit 'b' to be taken to the first broken package and see what's going on. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
Daniel Burrows wrote: Or, if nautilus is not a dependency of gdm, then why is it automatically installed because of gdm? I still feel like I'm missing something. Because: gdm Depends: gnome-session gnome-session Recommends: nautilus Thanks for the clarifications, and the tip about 'aptitude why -v'. (That's a lot of packages!) I removed gdm, which in turn removed the majority of the automatically installed packages I wanted removed, including gnome-session and nautilus. Then I reinstalled gdm, which itself has only a few dependencies, gnome-session and nautilus not among them. That's the result I wanted, it was unclear to me whether doing it that way was the right way to achieve that result (right as in most efficient, least likely to have unintended consequences). The thing is I was planning on keeping gdm, though I guess I could switch to xdm, or do without a display manager. But gdm, according to aptitude, shouldn't require nautilus. It shouldn't even require gnome-session, just one of gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. I have Openbox and xterm installed, so I should be covered there, right? Then you need to remove gnome-session and replace it with something else. That gets to the heart of my confusion about how this works, because I didn't *need* a replacement for gnome-session -- I already had packages installed that satisfied that requirement. But aptitude wouldn't automatically remove the automatically installed gnome-session unless I removed gdm. I could have manually removed gnome-session without breaking anything, but all that would have done was remove gnome-session -- that action would not have removed nautilus, even though nautilus was still installed because gnome-session recommended it. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it seems like going the route of removing then reinstalling gdm was the only way to take care of a lot of these packages that were hanging around in one fell swoop. Anyway, none of this is a problem. I was just trying to understand what was going on and learn how to use the tools at hand better. I still have some odds and ends installed that I probably don't need, but I'll gradually weed them out. And, probably in three months or so, I'll decide to give GNOME another go, and start all over. :-) Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
Andrew Reid wrote: On Saturday 21 February 2009 20:34:09 Michael M. Moore wrote: Maybe there is no magic package that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? I can't answer the why question, but I use apt-get autoremove and deborphan to prune the installed package list. Deborphan has to be installed first, and if you're very brave, you do: apt-get remove --purge `deborphan` ... repeatedly until it converges, i.e. runs out of packages to remove. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm trying to stick to one tool (aptitude) and learn how to use it well, rather than switching back and forth between aptitude and apt-get, and instead of bringing other things like deborphan into the mix. But if I ever get really stuck, it's nice to know they are there. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 05:34:09PM -0800, Michael M. Moore wrote: But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. I've always found that the best way to sort out package dependancies is to use the full-screen mode of aptitude. Pick one of the packages you don't want any more, select it, go down to see what depends on it and choose one of the ones that its installed, etc. Or, you can simple mark the package for removal, which will 'break' the other packages, hit 'b' to be taken to the first broken package and see what's going on. That's most likely what I'll do with the remaining packages I don't need. As it is, removing then reinstalling gdm took care of a bunch of them, probably the majority that were left. Michael M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 09:54:00AM -0800, Michael M. Moore mich...@writemoore.net was heard to say: The thing is I was planning on keeping gdm, though I guess I could switch to xdm, or do without a display manager. But gdm, according to aptitude, shouldn't require nautilus. It shouldn't even require gnome-session, just one of gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. I have Openbox and xterm installed, so I should be covered there, right? Then you need to remove gnome-session and replace it with something else. That gets to the heart of my confusion about how this works, because I didn't *need* a replacement for gnome-session -- I already had packages installed that satisfied that requirement. aptitude conservatively assumes that if A depends on B, that you might want B because of A. That's true even if the same dependency could be satisfied by another package -- otherwise aptitude would be in the business of guessing which alternative not to delete. :-) But aptitude wouldn't automatically remove the automatically installed gnome-session unless I removed gdm. I could have manually removed gnome-session without breaking anything, but all that would have done was remove gnome-session -- that action would not have removed nautilus, even though nautilus was still installed because gnome-session recommended it. I'm not sure, but I bet that there was something else installed that needed nautilus, and that gdm depended on or recommended. I can't see any obvious candidates in that list, though. (I tried a few, and they all only require gnome-session) Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 22:39, Douglas A. Tutty dtu...@vianet.ca wrote: On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 05:34:09PM -0800, Michael M. Moore wrote: But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. I've always found that the best way to sort out package dependancies is to use the full-screen mode of aptitude. Pick one of the packages you don't want any more, select it, go down to see what depends on it and choose one of the ones that its installed, etc. Or, you can simple mark the package for removal, which will 'break' the other packages, hit 'b' to be taken to the first broken package and see what's going on. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Agree, aptitude is the greatest package manager I've ever seen~ Wang Long -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
Celejar wrote: On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:34:09 -0800 Michael M. Moore mich...@writemoore.net wrote: I thought I had this down by now, but I'm lost. I am in the process of removing much of GNOME, so I removed gnome-desktop-environment, which also removed gnome-core, and a whole bunch of other things. I also removed evolution. But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. Maybe there is no magic package that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? Try 'aptitude why some-package', and follow it up the chain of packages. If there's indeed one package keeping in a bunch of others, you should encounter it fairly quickly. Thanks. I haven't quite figured out what's going on, but this at least helps me find why I'm confused. Here's an example: mcu...@debdesk:~$ aptitude why nautilus i gdm Dependsgnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator i A gnome-session Recommends nautilus So, if I'm understanding correctly, aptitude is telling me that nautilus is automatically installed because of gdm and gnome-session. But here is what aptitude shows for nautilus: mcu...@debdesk:~$ aptitude show nautilus Package: nautilus State: installed Automatically installed: yes Version: 2.20.0-7 Priority: optional Section: gnome Maintainer: Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org Uncompressed Size: 1507k Depends: libart-2.0-2 (= 2.3.18), libatk1.0-0 (= 1.20.0), libbonobo2-0 (= 2.15.0), libc6 (= 2.7-1), libcairo2 (= 1.2.4), libeel2-2.20, libesd0 (= 0.2.35) | libesd-alsa0 (= 0.2.35), libexempi3, libexif12, libgail-common (= 1.10.1), libgail18 (= 1.10.1), libgconf2-4 (= 2.13.5), libglade2-0 (= 1:2.6.1), libglib2.0-0 (= 2.16.0), libgnome-desktop-2 (= 2.22.0), libgnome2-0 (= 2.17.3), libgnomecanvas2-0 (= 2.11.1), libgnomeui-0 (= 2.17.1), libgnomevfs2-0 (= 1:2.17.90), libgtk2.0-0 (= 2.12.0), libnautilus-extension1 (= 2.17.90), liborbit2 (= 1:2.14.10), libpango1.0-0 (= 1.20.3), librsvg2-2 (= 2.18.1), libselinux1 (= 2.0.59), libstartup-notification0 (= 0.8-1), libtrackerclient0 (= 0.6.2), libx11-6, libxml2 (= 2.6.27), nautilus-data (= 2.20), nautilus-data ( 2.21), shared-mime-info, gnome-control-center (= 2.6), desktop-file-utils (= 0.7) Recommends: desktop-base (= 0.2), eject, nautilus-cd-burner (= 2.6), librsvg2-common, libgnomevfs2-extra, app-install-data, synaptic Suggests: eog, evince | pdf-viewer, totem | mp3-decoder, tracker, fam Conflicts: libnautilus2-2, libnautilus2-dev Replaces: libnautilus2-2 Provides: nautilus-extensions-1.0 Description: file manager and graphical shell for GNOME No gdm, no gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. Here's gdm: mcu...@debdesk:~$ aptitude show gdm Package: gdm State: installed Automatically installed: no Version: 2.20.7-4 Priority: optional Section: gnome Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers pkg-gnome-maintain...@lists.alioth.debian.org Uncompressed Size: 15.4M Depends: libart-2.0-2 (= 2.3.18), libatk1.0-0 (= 1.20.0), libattr1 (= 2.4.41-1), libc6 (= 2.7-1), libcairo2 (= 1.2.4), libdbus-1-3 (= 1.0.2), libdbus-glib-1-2 (= 0.71), libdmx1, libfontconfig1 (= 2.4.0), libfreetype6 (= 2.3.5), libglade2-0 (= 1:2.6.1), libglib2.0-0 (= 2.16.0), libgnomecanvas2-0 (= 2.11.1), libgtk2.0-0 (= 2.12.0), libpam0g (= 0.99.7.1), libpango1.0-0 (= 1.20.3), librsvg2-2 (= 2.18.1), libselinux1 (= 2.0.59), libwrap0 (= 7.6-4~), libx11-6, libxau6, libxdmcp6, libxext6, libxi6, libxinerama1, libxml2 (= 2.6.27), zlib1g (= 1:1.1.4), debconf (= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, adduser, libpam-modules (= 0.72-1), libpam-runtime (= 0.76-13.1), gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator, gksu (= 1.0.7), lsb-base (= 3.2-14), librsvg2-common Recommends: whiptail | dialog, zenity, gdm-themes, xserver-xephyr | xnest, xserver-xorg Suggests: locales, pm-utils, libpam-gnome-keyring Conflicts: fast-user-switch-applet ( 2.17.4), gnome-panel ( 2.19.2), gnome-screensaver ( 2.17.7), gnome-session ( 2.19.2) Provides: x-display-manager Description: GNOME Display Manager No nautilus. If I try to remove nautilus: mcu...@debdesk:~$ sudo
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 01:49:34AM -0800, Michael M. Moore mich...@writemoore.net was heard to say: Celejar wrote: On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:34:09 -0800 Michael M. Moore mich...@writemoore.net wrote: I thought I had this down by now, but I'm lost. I am in the process of removing much of GNOME, so I removed gnome-desktop-environment, which also removed gnome-core, and a whole bunch of other things. I also removed evolution. But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. Maybe there is no magic package that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? Try 'aptitude why some-package', and follow it up the chain of packages. If there's indeed one package keeping in a bunch of others, you should encounter it fairly quickly. Thanks. I haven't quite figured out what's going on, but this at least helps me find why I'm confused. Here's an example: mcu...@debdesk:~$ aptitude why nautilus i gdm Dependsgnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator i A gnome-session Recommends nautilus There's your reason; just to repeat it: gdb Depends: gnome-session gnome-session Recommends: nautilus. So, if I'm understanding correctly, aptitude is telling me that nautilus is automatically installed because of gdm and gnome-session. But here is what aptitude shows for nautilus: [snip] No gdm, no gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. That's because nautilus doesn't depend on any of those. They depend on it. Here's gdm: [snip] Depends: libart-2.0-2 (= 2.3.18), libatk1.0-0 (= 1.20.0), libattr1 (= 2.4.41-1), libc6 (= 2.7-1), libcairo2 (= 1.2.4), libdbus-1-3 (= 1.0.2), libdbus-glib-1-2 (= 0.71), libdmx1, libfontconfig1 (= 2.4.0), libfreetype6 (= 2.3.5), libglade2-0 (= 1:2.6.1), libglib2.0-0 (= 2.16.0), libgnomecanvas2-0 (= 2.11.1), libgtk2.0-0 (= 2.12.0), libpam0g (= 0.99.7.1), libpango1.0-0 (= 1.20.3), librsvg2-2 (= 2.18.1), libselinux1 (= 2.0.59), libwrap0 (= 7.6-4~), libx11-6, libxau6, libxdmcp6, libxext6, libxi6, libxinerama1, libxml2 (= 2.6.27), zlib1g (= 1:1.1.4), debconf (= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, adduser, libpam-modules (= 0.72-1), libpam-runtime (= 0.76-13.1), gnome-session | x-session-manager | ^ No nautilus. No, gdm Depends: gnome-session. [snip] Ok, so removing gdm would take care of nautilus and many other packages I would like to remove. including all the gnome packages, evolution-data-server, metacity, and so on. So why doesn't 'aptitude show nautilus' list gdm as a dependency? Because nautilus doesn't depend on gdm; it's the other way around. If aptitude went around installing everything that depended on whatever you wanted to install, you'd have all of Debian on your system pretty quickly. ;-) Or, if nautilus is not a dependency of gdm, then why is it automatically installed because of gdm? I still feel like I'm missing something. Because: gdm Depends: gnome-session gnome-session Recommends: nautilus The thing is I was planning on keeping gdm, though I guess I could switch to xdm, or do without a display manager. But gdm, according to aptitude, shouldn't require nautilus. It shouldn't even require gnome-session, just one of gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. I have Openbox and xterm installed, so I should be covered there, right? Then you need to remove gnome-session and replace it with something else. If you want *all* the reasons that nautilus is on your system, run $ aptitude why -v nautilus | less and read through all the answers that you get out. (I apologize for the lousy formatting you'll see in the process, there's already a bug about it). e.g., on my system nautilus is also held on the computer by gnome-desktop-environment and rhythmbox. Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:34:09 -0800 Michael M. Moore mich...@writemoore.net wrote: I thought I had this down by now, but I'm lost. I am in the process of removing much of GNOME, so I removed gnome-desktop-environment, which also removed gnome-core, and a whole bunch of other things. I also removed evolution. But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be. Maybe there is no magic package that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? Try 'aptitude why some-package', and follow it up the chain of packages. If there's indeed one package keeping in a bunch of others, you should encounter it fairly quickly. Celejar -- mailmin.sourceforge.net - remote access via secure (OpenPGP) email ssuds.sourceforge.net - A Simple Sudoku Solver and Generator -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Saturday 21 February 2009 20:34:09 Michael M. Moore wrote: Maybe there is no magic package that is keeping these things installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the packages that will break but that I don't want anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively quickly. Any advice? I can't answer the why question, but I use apt-get autoremove and deborphan to prune the installed package list. Deborphan has to be installed first, and if you're very brave, you do: apt-get remove --purge `deborphan` ... repeatedly until it converges, i.e. runs out of packages to remove. -- A. -- Andrew Reid / rei...@bellatlantic.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
