Brian Nelson <pyro@debian.org> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 02:25:08PM -0400, Marc Shapiro wrote:Looking through the output of 'dpkg --get-selections', however, see a lot of packages with a status of 'deinstall.' Are these packages that should be uninstalled, but for some reason are being kept? I have not noticed this status before, and am curious about it.It means they are marked for deinstallation in the dselect database (/var/lib/dpkg/status). "apt-get dist-upgrade" doesn't pay attention to that database; you'd need to use "apt-get dselect-upgrade" or just run dselect for any of those to be noticed.
Actually, on looking at dpkg -l, all 64 of these packages are marked as 'rc' (remove requested, config files still present). Unfortunately, none of those appear be removed by apt-get dselect-upgrade. That command wants to remove three OTHER packages, upgrade one package, and install 74 NEW packages, none of which I need, want, or have any connection with the one package (fetchmail) being upgraded. Many of them are KDE packages (I use only a very few kde packages and DO NOT run the DE). Others are things like portmap (which I DO NOT want), bochs-doc (I purged bochs without using it), a bunch of libs and other things that I do not need.
All in all, apt-get dselect-update does NOT seem to remove those packages, or do anything else that I want. So is there some other way that will completely remove those packages (including thier config files) without installing a ton of stuff that I do not want, or need?
-- Marc Shapiro mshapiro_42@yahoo.com