Re: package management help

[Bernd Semler <debianliste@be-sem.de>]

Stan Hoeppner schrieb am 14.10.2011 23:53 -0500:

> The problem:
> ~$ aptitude safe-upgrade
> Resolving dependencies...
> The following packages will be upgraded:
>   apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common
> ....
> This has gone on for many years, including when the system was Lenny and
> Etch before that.  I've always gone ahead and installed everything
> aptitude recommends for fear of breaking something due to a dependency.
> 
> I can't see how lighttpd or anything else would depend on anything
> apache2.  If apache2, any/all of it, isn't needed, I'd like to
> completely purge apache2 from this system once and for all, and avoid
> aptitude safe-upgrade wanting to constantly install apache2 related
> packages.
> 
> Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks.
> 
You could check with:

aptitude why $packagename 

and/or in combination with --show-summary (there is an example in the
man page). 

Another proposal is:

apt-cache rdepends $packagename

HTH Bernd