I have been unable to get a usb webcam to work. No application finds the webcam. In an effort to get the cam working, I installed both cheese and Zoom. Since neither of these work, I want to remove them. When I installed cheese, it brought with it 37 files and 15MB. I want to remove all the associated files. In another thread, I was given the tip to try
zypper packages --orphaned
. This produced dozens of packages in the result.
While trying to find out how to delete this list without having to do that one by one, I saw a related command
zypper packages --unneeded
. That produced an even longer list of packages.
Is there a command to remove these packages in bulk? It is safe to remove these packages?
I don’t know about ‘unneeded’ (I have none listed), but you have to be careful with ‘orphaned’. I have six ‘orphaned’ packages that were installed from rpm’s that are not part of any repository, hence orphaned, but I do use/need them.
You can also use Yast to view these under the “Package Classification” tab. It is easy to delete multiple packages from there.
There’s a button for “secondary filter”. Click on that, and select “Unmaintained packages”.
Those are the orphaned packages. I usually remove those. But sometimes I get a confict, where I cannot remove without also removing another package. You have to use your judgement.
And, of course, if those orphaned packages are ones that you want to keep, then don’t remove them.
I don’t think there’s a similar way for “unneeded” packages. However, keep in mind that “unneeded” is not the same as “unwanted”. Only remove an unneeded package if you are sure that it is unwanted. As far as I know, “unneeded” just means that there isn’t anything having that as a dependency, and it isn’t in the initial pattern for the distribution. Packages that you have installed for your own use might still show as “unneeded”.
I looked in both places and got interesting results. Under “Orphaned Packages,” I got a lot of libraries, mostly boost and various other libraries. It also included a 66B file labeled opensuseDVD and the zoom package. I just used zoom an hour ago! The version numbers of these were all in red.
Next I checked the “Unneeded Packages” tab. This time, there were a lot more packages. Very many of them were -lang packages, which I don’t think I need. But there were many packages that I feel uncomfortable deleting. There were lots of perl and python files and things that I have no idea what they might be about, like maven files. When I checked installed files, maven was not installed. So I guess its safe to remove its dependent files. But I know I have to be selective if I delete these files: gcc and some other useful files (I think) were in this unneeded list.
Orphaned packages are packages that are not found in the repos you have enabled at that moment in time. These packages may be installed from a repo that was disabled or removed later. It may alo be packages that were installed not from a repo (remember that you can install RPM packges, e.g. downlodaed from somewhere, direct with zypper). And yes, YaST > Software Management shows their version strings in read.
IMHO words like “unneeded” suggest artificial inteligence in the software. I doubt that anybody else but the system manager can decide if something is unneeded. The software can only check if a package is needed by another package as mentioned in that other package (a so called dependancy).
Btw, apart from acadamic curiosity, all that deleting is in most cases only taking your time, while the maybe useless packages only take some disk space.
And a warning, if I remember correctly, once there was somebody who thought he did not need Ruby. After removal YaST did not function anymore :(. Lesson: there might be more dependancies then just those that are included in the RPM packages.
Another warning: Testing of new versions of a software package is performed in a clean environment, which has no remnants of older packages. So when in trouble you may indeed want to watch for related older packages.
Unneeded packages may clutter the journal as purge-kernels-service does. This is distracting and you better remove them.
Are you sure about that. In my list from YaST > Software Management > View: Package Groups > Unneeded Packages I have e.g.: akregator (which I use at this very moment to view the new threads of these forums), kaddressbook, kate and many other KDE programs, at (a CLI tool already since tens of years), telnet, yast2-sound. Only a very random selection of names that are well know to me because I have used them and still use and may very well need in the future.
Well, after removing purge-kernels-service I currently have:
erlangen:~ # zypper packages --unneeded
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
S | Repository | Name | Version | Arch
--+---------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------------+-------
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | blender-lang | 2.82a-3.3 | noarch
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | iproute2-arpd | 5.6.0-3.1 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | libcroco-0_6-3 | 0.6.13-2.5 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | libhttp_parser2_7_1 | 2.7.1-2.7 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | libstartup-notification-1-0 | 0.12-16.8 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | libstdc++6-pp-gcc9-32bit | 9.3.1+git1296-1.1 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | libtbbmalloc2 | 2020.2-1.1 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | python-gtk | 2.24.0-20.2 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | python-xml | 2.7.18-1.1 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | release-notes-openSUSE | 84.87.20180228.827b030-1.9 | noarch
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | systemd-network | 245-4.1 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | telnet | 1.2-174.1 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | xf86-input-mouse | 1.9.3-2.1 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | xf86-input-void | 1.4.1-4.1 | x86_64
i | openSUSE-20191106-0 | zypper-aptitude | 1.14.36-1.1 | noarch
erlangen:~ #
I don’t care about the above. But if a new unneeded package shows up and I know it is unneeded I will delete it. BTW I have akregator too, but it isn’t listed as unneeded. Missed to install a pattern?
zypper knows whether package was installed explicitly or as dependency. When you installed some package that pulled in 20+ other packages as dependencies and then after couple of hours decided you do not need this package, “zypper rm --clean-deps” comes rather useful - otherwise you are left with all extra packages or need to search and remove them individually.
Lesson: there might be more dependancies then just those that are included in the RPM packages.
If program that is written in Ruby does not have ruby as package dependency, something is seriously wrong and bug report is in order.
I probably did this backwards. I uninstalled cheese and zoom in yast. Then I ran zypper rm --clean-deps but if failed for too few arguments. I guess its looking for cheese or zoom. When I included those package names (I don’t know the proper command, so I tried putting the name in various places) it said it could not find the packages so there was nothing to do. It seems to me that if I reinstall those packages to get at the dependencies, that might work?
According to the man page, you should add that as an option to the command that removes the package. It will then remove the package and it’s dependencies.
That will work: Use zypper se to find the correct package name. zypper in cheese; zypper rm --clean-deps cheese. BTW: ‘zypper rm --clean-deps ruby’ is not what most users want:
erlangen:~ # zypper rm --clean-deps ruby
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...
The following 115 packages are going to be REMOVED:
alsa alsa-oss alsa-ucm-conf alsa-utils augeas autoyast2-installation checkmedia iscsiuio libatopology2 libfont-specimen0 libldapcpp1 libmediacheck5 libo*****csiusr0_2_0
libsamba-policy0-python3 libstorage-ng-lang libstorage-ng-ruby libstorage-ng1 libyui-ncurses-pkg11 open-iscsi patterns-kde-kde_yast patterns-yast-yast2_basis perl-Crypt-SmbHash
perl-Digest-MD4 perl-Parse-RecDescent perl-X500-DN perl-XML-LibXML perl-XML-NamespaceSupport perl-XML-SAX perl-XML-SAX-Base perl-XML-SAX-Expat perl-XML-Simple python3-tdb
python3-tevent ruby ruby-solv ruby2.6-rubygem-abstract_method ruby2.6-rubygem-cfa ruby2.6-rubygem-cfa_grub2 ruby2.6-rubygem-cheetah ruby2.6-rubygem-fast_gettext
ruby2.6-rubygem-ruby-augeas ruby2.6-rubygem-ruby-dbus ruby2.6-rubygem-simpleidn ruby2.6-rubygem-unf ruby2.6-rubygem-unf_ext samba-python3 unzip unzip-doc yast2 yast2-add-on
yast2-alternatives yast2-apparmor yast2-auth-client yast2-auth-server yast2-bootloader yast2-control-center yast2-control-center-qt yast2-core yast2-country yast2-country-data
yast2-firewall yast2-fonts yast2-hardware-detection yast2-http-server yast2-installation yast2-iscsi-client yast2-journal yast2-ldap yast2-logs yast2-mail
yast2-metapackage-handler yast2-network yast2-nfs-client yast2-nfs-common yast2-nis-client yast2-ntp-client yast2-online-update yast2-online-update-frontend yast2-packager
yast2-pam yast2-perl-bindings yast2-pkg-bindings yast2-printer yast2-proxy yast2-python3-bindings yast2-ruby-bindings yast2-samba-client yast2-samba-server yast2-scanner
yast2-security yast2-services-manager yast2-slp yast2-snapper yast2-sound yast2-storage-ng yast2-sudo yast2-support yast2-sysconfig yast2-tftp-server yast2-theme
yast2-theme-breeze yast2-theme-oxygen yast2-trans-de yast2-trans-en yast2-trans-stats yast2-transfer yast2-tune yast2-update yast2-users yast2-vm yast2-vpn yast2-x11 yast2-xml
yast2-ycp-ui-bindings yp-tools
The following 2 patterns are going to be REMOVED:
kde_yast yast2_basis
115 packages to remove.
After the operation, 70.0 MiB will be freed.
Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y): n
erlangen:~ #
Ok. This is troubling. After reading the thread about the various ways to get rid of packages, I used them to get rid of zoom. I checked afterward and it appeared to be all gone. Then, I was sitting here in front of my pc, not on the internet (in fact, not doing anything - just looking at the monitor), and a warning popped up. It said the zoom certificate was (wrong or expired or just bad… I don’t remember) and did I want to continue!!! The zoom icon was now in my latte dock! This was AFTER I had scrubbed everything related to zoom, including Yelp that it dragged in with the install.
I don’t know what to make of this. Moreover, I just relocated my pc box to a more visible spot on my desk and I see the disk activity blinking every second or so. Maybe that is normal behavior, but after the zoom surprise, it makes me suspicious.
I did reboot. The problem is that since this warning popped up only once and after I thought zoom was gone, I don’t know if it will reappear or if it is really gone. I understand there is not much that can be done now. I just thought that this should be brought to the attention of others that might be using zoom.