Re: Pursuant to my efforts to remove, and update the remaining :amd64 built packages [SOLVED]

[Jörg-Volker Peetz <jvpeetz@web.de>]

Gene Heskett wrote on 06/05/16 03:11:
> On Saturday 04 June 2016 17:49:02 Jörg-Volker Peetz wrote:
> 
>> Gene Heskett wrote on 06/04/16 23:02:
>>> On Saturday 04 June 2016 16:12:30 Jörg-Volker Peetz wrote:
>>>> I'm glad it worked for you.
>>>> Now I'm just curious what
>>>>
>>>>   aptitude search '~c'
>>>>
>>>> spits out now.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> jvp.
>>>
>>> A rather lengthy list I'll paste, wordwrap off again:
>>>
>>> root@coyote:/var/lib/dpkg# aptitude search ~c
>>> c   brasero                                                         
>>>                  - CD/DVD burning application for GNOME c  
>>> brasero-common                                                      
>>>              - Common files for the Brasero CD burning application
>>> and library c   browser-plugin-gnash                                
>>>                              - GNU Shockwave Flash (SWF) player -
>>> Plugin for Mozilla and derivatives
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> c   xfdesktop4                                                      
>>>                  - xfce desktop background, icons and root menu
>>> manager c   xfprint4                                                
>>>                          - Printer GUI for Xfce4 c   xfwm4          
>>>                                                                   -
>>> window manager of the Xfce project
>>>
>>> That's all folks!  Thanks JVP.
>>>
>>> Cheers, Gene Heskett
>>
>> All these remnants of previously installed packages can be safely
>> removed from your system in my opinion.
>> If you prefer dpkg, try
>>
>>   dpkg --purge --pending
>>
> Failed, libpixman1.0 has deps from the xorg.server
> root@coyote:/var/lib/dpkg# dpkg --purge --pending
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of libpixman-1-0:i386:
>  xserver-xorg-video-intel depends on libpixman-1-0 (>= 0.21.6).
>  libpixman-1-dev depends on libpixman-1-0 (= 0.26.0-4+deb7u2).
>  xserver-xorg-core depends on libpixman-1-0 (>= 0.21.6).
>  libcairo2:i386 depends on libpixman-1-0 (>= 0.21.6).
> 
> dpkg: error processing libpixman-1-0:i386 (--purge):
>  dependency problems - not removing
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  libpixman-1-0:i386
> 

Since the automatism is too reckless, we can use manual control, just purge
packages in "c" state:

  dpkg --purge $(aptitude -F '%p' search '~c')


>> Or heavier, using aptitude
>>
>>   aptitude purge '~c'
> 
> And that wants to behead the system, removing quite a few packages I use 
> frequently, so I gave it a 'n'.
>>
>> but this could try to remove also other automatically installed
>> packages which are not needed by any other package. To get a list of
>> such candidates use
>>
>>   aptitude search '~g'
> 
> And that returns an equally lengthy list, all prefaced with an 'id'.  No 
> clue what that means as I don't believe I have the reference manual.

The packages tagged with "id" are selected to be removed (deinstall).
(aptitude shows in the first column the package status and in the second column
the desired state, just inverted compared to the the output of dpkg).
Since this is a hint for packages no longer needed, better take a closer
look at this list and sort out what's really needed.

For each package you want to keep, change the selection state to "install", for
example for the package libpixman-1-0

  echo "libpixman-1-0  install" | dpkg --set-selections

Now

  dpkg -l libpixman-1-0

should show the package with "ii" at the beginning of the line.

Regards,
jvp.