[SOLVED] Complete removal of totem and all its dependencies

I was toying around with a base install of Debian 7.8 + fluxbox yesterday. The purpose of this particular install is both as a small document/print server for my house (have 7 computers)and as a basic network music player for my "blow away women's clothing" stereo system (new Italian Job anyone?).

It's an old Pentium 2 with a WHOPPING 360 MHz processor. I installed totem and all associated dependencies (430 Mb) to see if the system in such a barebones state was capable of playing movies too- it can only play really crappy quality .avi files so that's a no go. However when I run apt-get autoremove or apt-get purge it only shows 187 MB of files/packages being removed. Since nothing needed any of the dependencies before, why is apt not removing everything? I could just use aptitude and manually remove everything but that's no fun. This isn't really mission critical at all, but any insight would be appreciated.

Most people would just use package manager to remove it. As to why seeming more files are being removed may be other files from older updates and changes. Uninstallers are generally poor at making perfect choices by the way.

The most complete way would be to find out what the installer did and remove it being sure to double check that shared dependencies don't get removed.

Might be worth it to just reload from scratch and start all over.

As user, run;

apt-cache showpkg totem

Should tell you all you need to know about the depends and so forth.

Then you can compare that to what "apt-get purge" is removing. Really should be getting all of them. If not then you can remove them individually.

I am wondering if your system is set up to install recommends with packages. This is the default setting. This would be the most likely cause of the size difference between install and purge.

APT::Install-Recommends "false";

in a /etc/apt/apt.conf file will stop that behaviour and will list the recommends like you get a list of "sugests" now.

Recommends and sugested packages are also shown with the command;

apt-cache show totem

That command is better for your needs. showpkg shows a list of reverse depends but not recommends and suggests.

This is where the discription and depends info and so forth come from in the lower right pane of synaptic if you have that set up to show all that extra info. I find the cli much more informative and easier to use if comparing a number of packages as you can have them in different terminal windows or, as I usually do, in different terminal tabs.

Originally Posted by widget As user, run; apt-cache showpkg totem Should tell you all you need to know about the depends and so forth. Then you can compare that to what "apt-get purge" is removing. Really should be getting all of them. If not then you can remove them individually.

That is what I was afraid of. I was prepared to do it anyways but I have never had such a discrepancy in size from install/remove (auto, purge, or otherwise) so I was looking for some insight as to why this is happening. Like I said in the first post, this is just a file/print server with the capacity to play music from an external hdd. Strictly speaking I'm not worried about the other 300 Mb of files lurking- this thing has a 10 Gb hdd with 2.5 Gb set for / and the rest for /home. I still have 1.5 Gb of overhead (on /) and I have my print server running already, though I'm still working through directory structure and relevant permissions for the files end of the server.

Originally Posted by widget I am wondering if your system is set up to install recommends with packages. This is the default setting. This would be the most likely cause of the size difference between install and purge.

No, when I first install any distro I spend a while mucking about in the /etc directory checking all of the relevant .conf/.cfg files- and aside from customizing the grub menu and bash, apt/aptitude is one of the first things that I customize since starting barebones requires many installs and I want them done my way because while I do like automatic dependency resolution, when I install something I want ONLY dependencies being installed. I'm using aptitude not synaptic for package management too. I run fluxbox (or any other *box) as a WM simply so I can have several terminals running without having to switch tty, so I prefer to use as many terminal apps as I can to save on resources (generally).

I'll leave this open for a while as I'm screwing around with it, maybe I can figure something out. Thanks for the insight.

Oh, I see. Another picky bugger.

I do the same thing. My installs are usually larger than using the default full install. But that gives me all sorts of stuff I never use. I like packages that I actually use on here.

Have fun.

Originally Posted by widget Oh, I see. Another picky bugger

Hey, I thought that's what using Linux was all about especially base distributions (I think that's the P.C. terminology) like Debian, Slackware, and Red Hat.

So I used

# apt-cache show totem

in one terminal and just removed all relevant (or irrelevant in this case) dependencies manually using aptitude in another. Probably missed something but I'm not THAT picky... I just want something stable and the more that I know and understand the system and the files contained within, the more stable I can make it.

Marking as solved, not that big of a deal to do it the hard way as it turns out. Sort of like speed dial on phones- I don't remember anyone's phone numbers anymore. Damn, automation and convenience has left me lazy....

I use apt-whatever more than aptitude.

The apt family of commands, apt-get, apt-mark, apt-cache, etc all together basically do the things you can do with aptitude on the cli. It is just easier for people to learn all the commands for, say, apt-get, so they are not as intimidated by it.

Have yet to find a replacement for "why" and "why-not" though.

Apt-cache is very handy. But you can do the same things with aptitude. I just know apt-cache. Have to go to the man page for aptitude continuously.

Only place I really like the commands better on apt-get is for installing packages from a different repo than the one you have pinned as default.

The syntax is easier for serial installs as the package name comes last.

apt-get -t <repo> install <package name>

aptitude install <package name> -t <repo>

Never will understand the big argument over the two tools. One appeals to some, the other to others. Both do the same thing. What is the big deal?

Yes it is pretty easy to deal with packages. I have a problem with the concept that using a gui package manager like synaptic is quicker and easier. Is much slower for something like you were doing with totem. For one thing you can only have one instance of it up at one time.

Apt-cache is usable on the $ prompt so having that open and a window with # open can be really fast. Several tabs on the $ terminal can give you more information than you ever need.

And it is fun. Always important.

I came to Linux, like many, from Windows. I tried to control that OS. Actually was pretty good at it. Then got pissed about Vista and just switched completely - anything had to be better. Will never, ever learn the tricks available in Linux. Not enough life time left. But, unlike Windows, Linux is just fun to play with.

Never had any use for computer games. But I have come to enjoying playing games with my computer; "gee, can I get it to do this?" Amazingly I usually can. May break some installs learning how but that is why so many of them have Victim in the partition lable and host name.

I used aptitude in this particular instance to watch out for broken packages as I was removing others, in the event that one of the listed dependencies was actually needed. Was working under the assumption that some (probably very few) of the depends for totem existed on the system before I installed since there was no way to see exactly what I installed at the time.