Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 01:49:34AM -0800, "Michael M. Moore" <michael@writemoore.net> was heard to say:
> Celejar wrote:
>> On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:34:09 -0800
>> "Michael M. Moore" <michael@writemoore.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I thought I had this down by now, but I'm lost.
>>>
>>> I am in the process of removing much of GNOME, so I removed
>>> gnome-desktop-environment, which also removed gnome-core, and a whole
>>> bunch of other things. I also removed evolution.
>>>
>>> But I'm still left with a whole slew of automatically installed
>>> packages I don't want anymore, and I can't figure out how to identify
>>> why they are still installed. I thought the gconf2 package might be
>>> keeping them installed, but when I selected that for removal, several
>>> packages I want to keep (for example, quodlibet, which is not marked
>>> as automatically installed and does not depend gconf2) were also
>>> marked for deletion. I don't understand why that would be.
>>>
>>> Maybe there is no "magic package" that is keeping these things
>>> installed and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one,
>>> along with the packages that will break but that I don't want
>>> anymore. I just thought I might be missing something obvious about
>>> the best way to take care of getting rid of a bunch of automatically
>>> installed packages relatively quickly.
>>>
>>> Any advice?
>>
>> Try 'aptitude why some-package', and follow it up the chain of
>> packages. If there's indeed one package keeping in a bunch of others,
>> you should encounter it fairly quickly.
>
> Thanks. I haven't quite figured out what's going on, but this at least
> helps me find why I'm confused. Here's an example:
>
> mcubed@debdesk:~$ aptitude why nautilus
> i gdm Depends gnome-session | x-session-manager |
> x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator
> i A gnome-session Recommends nautilus
There's your reason; just to repeat it:
gdb Depends: gnome-session
gnome-session Recommends: nautilus.
> So, if I'm understanding correctly, aptitude is telling me that nautilus
> is automatically installed because of gdm and gnome-session.
>
> But here is what aptitude shows for nautilus:
[snip]
> No gdm, no gnome-session | x-session-manager | x-window-manager |
> x-terminal-emulator.
That's because nautilus doesn't depend on any of those. They depend
on it.
> Here's gdm:
[snip]
> Depends: libart-2.0-2 (>= 2.3.18), libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.20.0), libattr1 (>=
> 2.4.41-1), libc6 (>= 2.7-1), libcairo2 (>=
> 1.2.4), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2), libdbus-glib-1-2 (>= 0.71),
> libdmx1, libfontconfig1 (>= 2.4.0), libfreetype6
> (>= 2.3.5), libglade2-0 (>= 1:2.6.1), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.16.0),
> libgnomecanvas2-0 (>= 2.11.1), libgtk2.0-0 (>=
> 2.12.0), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.20.3),
> librsvg2-2 (>= 2.18.1), libselinux1 (>= 2.0.59),
> libwrap0 (>= 7.6-4~), libx11-6, libxau6, libxdmcp6, libxext6,
> libxi6, libxinerama1, libxml2 (>= 2.6.27), zlib1g
> (>= 1:1.1.4), debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, adduser,
> libpam-modules (>= 0.72-1), libpam-runtime (>=
> 0.76-13.1), gnome-session | x-session-manager |
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> No nautilus.
No, gdm Depends: gnome-session.
[snip]
> Ok, so removing gdm would take care of nautilus and many other packages
> I would like to remove. including all the gnome packages,
> evolution-data-server, metacity, and so on. So why doesn't 'aptitude
> show nautilus' list gdm as a dependency?
Because nautilus doesn't depend on gdm; it's the other way around.
If aptitude went around installing everything that depended on whatever
you wanted to install, you'd have all of Debian on your system pretty
quickly. ;-)
> Or, if nautilus is not a
> dependency of gdm, then why is it automatically installed because of
> gdm? I still feel like I'm missing something.
Because:
gdm Depends: gnome-session
gnome-session Recommends: nautilus
> The thing is I was planning on keeping gdm, though I guess I could
> switch to xdm, or do without a display manager. But gdm, according to
> aptitude, shouldn't require nautilus. It shouldn't even require
> gnome-session, just one of gnome-session | x-session-manager |
> x-window-manager | x-terminal-emulator. I have Openbox and xterm
> installed, so I should be covered there, right?
Then you need to remove gnome-session and replace it with something
else.
If you want *all* the reasons that nautilus is on your system, run
$ aptitude why -v nautilus | less
and read through all the answers that you get out. (I apologize for
the lousy formatting you'll see in the process, there's already a bug
about it). e.g., on my system nautilus is also held on the computer
by gnome-desktop-environment and rhythmbox.
Daniel
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