Package Manger in the System Tray

Hi. I recently installed openSUSE 13.1 in a VM (VirtualBox) and noticed a notification in the system tray informing me that updates were available. I chose to update, but then changed my mind when I realized how long it was going to take. I decided I’d rather uninstall everything I don’t want first, and then update. However, now that I’ve started it, I can’t figure out how to make it stop before it finishes short of just shutting down the VM (ive had bad experiences with improperly interrupting package managers in the past so I don’t consider this a real option). The notification widget in the system tray has a pause and stop button associated with the update process, but when I hit stop, it just starts back up immediately. Pause seems to do nothing. I noticed that the package manager also has an icon in the system tray. When I click on that I see a big “Cancel” button at the top of it, but it’s grayed out and I cannot click on it.

What is the proper way to stop the package manager when it’s still in the middle of downloading packages? Also, how would I go about disabling the automatic update notification service? I prefer to do all my package management from the command line anyways and I find constant update notifications to be distracting and unnecessary.

You really should not interrupt it if it is just down loading it should not be a problem but if it is installing you could have a mess. The first update can be large especially since it has been 3-4 months since the release. So you get all of it. And most will be for stuff you really don’t want to remove like Kernels and X and audio stuff etc.

Best to just let it go.

Well at this point it seems to be frozen. It says it’s downloading dbus or something, but it’s said that for about 10 minutes now. I guess I’ll just do a hard reset. Also, how about disabling the update notifcation service?

What desktop?

You can just ignore the notice but it will nag

You can also just do selected. Or if desktop is KDE just remove appr You can do update with zypper up or go to yast-software management or yast-online update

doing a cold shut down may break things so be prepared to reinstall. It may be fixable without a reinstall but if is a new install easier to just install again.

I’m using KDE (that’s the reason I’m trying openSUSE. I normally use Arch with KDE but you guys have some nice patches). Anyways, when I rebooted everything was fine since it was still downloading. I did a zypper rm apper and got rid of the system tray package management and now everything is all good.

Now there’s just one more zypper related questions I have. I’d create a new thread, but I don’t know if it’d be worth it since it’s probably really simple.
How can I list only explicitly installed applications which are not required by other packages. I use this to help me decide what I want to uninstall when I’m cleaning out packages I don’t want.

I actually answered just that today in another thread.

Please have a look here:
http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/495792-List-all-installed-packages?p=2627237#post2627237

Thank you for the fast responses. I appreciate it. Adjusting to a new package manager is always a pain for me.