I thought it was perfectly safe to execute "apt autoremove", which I was under the impression simply cleaned up old, unused .deb files. Apparently I was wrong, in a major way :-(
After executing autoremove and rebooting, my TDE desktop is missing all the widgets that used to be on the desktop and in the panels. Worse, I can't find them to re-add them to the desktop/panel any more. To give just one example, I used to run superkaramba; now it can't be found anywhere and I can't add it to the panel.
What do I need to do to get back my wonderful, functional desktop?
That's the last time I trust "autoremove" to do the right thing....
Doc
D. R. Evans wrote on 3/3/20 8:11 AM:
I thought it was perfectly safe to execute "apt autoremove", which I was under the impression simply cleaned up old, unused .deb files. Apparently I was wrong, in a major way :-(
After executing autoremove and rebooting, my TDE desktop is missing all the widgets that used to be on the desktop and in the panels. Worse, I can't find them to re-add them to the desktop/panel any more. To give just one example, I used to run superkaramba; now it can't be found anywhere and I can't add it to the panel.
What do I need to do to get back my wonderful, functional desktop?
That's the last time I trust "autoremove" to do the right thing....
I think I have all of them back, although, weirdly, some of them look different now. autoremove seems to have quite happily removed some of the actual installed binaries, not just no-longer-used .deb files. I had to manually reinstall a bunch of TDE-related packages that the system regarded as no longer installed (although, weirdly, the .deb files were still around and did not need to be re-downloaded).
Doc
On 03/03/2020 09:18 AM, D. R. Evans wrote:
autoremove seems to have quite happily removed some of the actual installed binaries, not just no-longer-used .deb files.
That's what autoremove does. You're confusing it with autoclean, which removes old package files that can no longer be downloaded. You might want to reference the man page for apt-get.
Glad you got your desktop fixed.
Dne út 3. března 2020 Dan Youngquist napsal(a):
On 03/03/2020 09:18 AM, D. R. Evans wrote:
autoremove seems to have quite happily removed some of the actual installed binaries, not just no-longer-used .deb files.
That's what autoremove does. You're confusing it with autoclean, which removes old package files that can no longer be downloaded. You might want to reference the man page for apt-get.
Glad you got your desktop fixed.
I do not assume that D.R. was confused and used the autoremove instead of autoclean. Autoclean has a completely different task and has no effect on the installed packages at all - it just clean in /var/cache/apt - and it is usually better to use apt clean for that purpose anyway.
In any case, autoremove should be safe. I also commonly use it. Therefore, I am concerned that this is at least the second occurence when it had unexpected behavior.
What distribution and version do you use? The first thing that comes to my mind is that some packages incorrectly use "Replaces:" so that it refers to itself. If a newer version of apt / apt-get for autoremove evaluates unnecessary packages based on Replaces, this could cause such unwanted behavior.
Cheers
I wonder if he was trying to run deb-orphan. I don't use it alot but this is what it sounds like. https://debian-administration.org/article/134/Removing_unnecessary_packages_...
Pisini, John wrote on 3/3/20 11:36 AM:
I wonder if he was trying to run deb-orphan. I don't use it alot but this is what it sounds like. https://debian-administration.org/article/134/Removing_unnecessary_packages_...
Nope. I was just following the system's suggestion to use autoremove to free up some disk space. The irony is that it was just me trying to be tidy: there's plenty of disk space, and the 400MB I saved isn't even noticeable. It certainly wasn't worth the hour or so it took to get everything back as it should be.
Doc
Slávek Banko wrote on 3/3/20 11:29 AM:
Dne út 3. března 2020 Dan Youngquist napsal(a):
On 03/03/2020 09:18 AM, D. R. Evans wrote:
autoremove seems to have quite happily removed some of the actual installed binaries, not just no-longer-used .deb files.
That's what autoremove does. You're confusing it with autoclean, which removes old package files that can no longer be downloaded. You might want to reference the man page for apt-get.
Glad you got your desktop fixed.
I do not assume that D.R. was confused and used the autoremove instead of autoclean. Autoclean has a completely different task and has no effect on the installed packages at all - it just clean in /var/cache/apt - and it is usually better to use apt clean for that purpose anyway.
In any case, autoremove should be safe. I also commonly use it. Therefore, I am concerned that this is at least the second occurence when it had unexpected behavior.
What distribution and version do you use? The first thing that comes to my
debian stable, kept up-to-date.
I was installing something this morning (I don't even remember what, after all the kerfuffle of trying to get my desktop back), and as part of that process was given a long list of packages that apt said I could safely remove by using autoremove, and that would save >400MB. That's why I did it; I won't be doing it again [as long as I remember this experience].
Doc
On 03/03/2020 10:29 AM, Slávek Banko wrote:
I do not assume that D.R. was confused and used the autoremove instead of autoclean.
I didn't assume. In both posts he described autoclean's function, but said he expected autoremove to do it.
On 03/03/2020 11:21 AM, D. R. Evans wrote:
I was installing something this morning (I don't even remember what, after all the kerfuffle of trying to get my desktop back), and as part of that process was given a long list of packages that apt said I could safely remove by using autoremove, and that would save >400MB.
Slavek is correct that autoremove shouldn't have uninstalled packages that were still in use, but I'm wondering if maybe there was a good reason it thought they were no longer required. Since you installed Trinity, have you uninstalled any of the metapackages, but left the packages they installed? That would make apt-get think the packages they installed were no longer needed, and autoremove would uninstall them.
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D. R. Evans -
Dan Youngquist -
Pisini, John -
Slávek Banko