Using systemctl to Stop, Mask, and Disable PackageKit on openSUSE for Future Prevention

Greetings,

This article’s based on this topic. Here’s another method to stop packagekit on the openSUSE platform. As someone who is still learning about this operating system and Linux in general, I hope this information is helpful, but I welcome any feedback or corrections from more experienced users.

PackageKit is a system designed to manage software installation and updates. However, you may encounter the following error when trying to install software (usually with Zypper or YaST):

PackageKit is blocking zypper. This happens if you have an updater applet or
other software management application using PackageKit running.
We can ask PackageKit to interrupt the current action as soon as possible, but
it depends on PackageKit how fast it will respond to this request.
Ask PackageKit to quit? [yes/no] (no): y
PackageKit is still running (probably busy).

To stop packagekit, you can use the following command:

sudo systemctl stop packagekit

This command stops the packagekit service temporarily.

If you want to prevent packagekit from starting automatically in the future, you can mask it with:

sudo systemctl mask packagekit

This command will disable the service entirely until you unmask it.

To check the status of packagekit, use:

systemctl status packagekit

This will show you whether the service is active or inactive.

To start packagekit again, you can use these commands:

sudo systemctl unmask packagekit
sudo systemctl start packagekit

The first command un-masks the service, allowing it to be started again.

Example Output: Here’s an example of what the output might look like when checking the status:

[NAME] :~> systemctl status packagekit
○ packagekit.service - PackageKit Daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/packagekit.service; static)
     Active: inactive (dead)

Note: Masking packagekit will prevent it from starting automatically, which may affect other applications that rely on it. If you need to revert this change, simply unmask and start the service again.

You are shooting the messenger. PackageKit is started on request from some other application. It never does anything by itself.

1 Like

well, actually it did in my case. It was there by it’s own.

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