Re: uninstalled packages in 'dpkg -l'
On Wed, 15 May 1996, Maarten Boekhold wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I always thought that 'dpkg -l' was supposed to show you all *installed*
> packages, but, when I do a: dpkg -l 'ncurses*' on my system, I get:
>
> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
> | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
> |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=bDesired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
> | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
> |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> ||/ Name Version Description
> +++-===============-==============-============================================
> un ncurses <unknown> (no description available)
> ii ncurses-base 1.9.9e-1 Video terminal manipulation: Minimum set of
> ii ncurses-bin 1.9.9e-1 Video terminal manipulation: associated prog
> un ncurses-dev <unknown> (no description available)
> un ncurses-develop <unknown> (no description available)
> un ncurses-pic <unknown> (no description available)
> un ncurses-runtime <unknown> (no description available)
> ii ncurses-term 1.9.9e-1 Video terminal manipulation: additional term
> un ncurses21-dev <unknown> (no description available)
> ii ncurses3.0 1.9.9e-1 Video terminal manipulation: shared
>
> Of these packages, all with a version of <unknown> are not installed, and
> I don't want these to show up either. They're confusing me.
>
> What can I do about this?
>
Some of these are archaic packages from an earlier installation (0.93R6
for example). Once they are in the dpkg database they are not removed,
even if they do not exist in your current package tree, unless you
explicitly delete them from the /var/lib/dpkg/available and
/var/lib/dpkg/status files. This is known problem and I think it is
being attended to by the maintainer of dpkg. If you delete them by hand,
you can at least clean things up a bit.
Cheers,
Carlo
***********************************************************************
* Carlo U. Segre *
* Department of Biological, Chemical and Physical Sciences *
* Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616 *
* Voice: (312) 567-3498 FAX: (312) 567-3494 *
* segre@charlie.acc.iit.edu *
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