Robert McQueen wrote:
cga wrote:Well.. I've already done this a couple of times - once w/ $ apt-get remove --purge gnome or something similar..This doesn't remove all the packages which make up GNOME, it removes just the "gnome" package, which depends on things like gdm, gnome-panel, gnome-session, etc, which make up the GNOME desktop. It removes the root of the dependency tree but leaves all the trunk, branches and leaves...
Seems to be the root cause of my problem. Since the "trunk, branches, leaves.." warts and all.. depend on the "root" I assumed that the packaging system would decide to remove them.
Furthermore (with regard to your removing xserver-xfree86 doesn't remove any of the UI software on your system because there is no dependency from xlib on an X server - this is because you can have all of this software installed and run forwarded over a network, so no X server is required locally.
Good point.
To remove all GNOME components, "apt-get remove --purge" a package which almost all of them depend on, such as libgtk2.0-0, or even more aggressively, libglib2.0-0, and then apt will also offer to remove everything else that depends on these packages. To remove everything that uses X, "apt-get remove --purge libx11-6" will have a similar effect. Be aware, however, that these commands will remove far more than just GNOME, so you should copy the list of packages that apt will be removing, and then you can paste the list back into a command like "xargs apt-get install <<EOF" to install them again (enter EOF or Ctrl+D to indicate you've finished entering the packages).
That's what I hoped removing the gnome package would achieve.But, this sounds like a good strategy. libgtk2 is probably the lowest layer that was corrupted so I'l give that a shot. And thanks much for the tip regarding the list of dependents that apt will display. Something I probably would not have thought of doing - and would have kicked myself afterwards for not doing so.
Hope this helps.
Very much so. Thank you.