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Old 04-11-2015, 10:35 AM   #1
Timtam
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Question Removing GNOME breaks whole system (Debian Wheezy 7.8)


Hi Guys,

i'm currently facing the following problem:
Some time ago I installed a Debian system onto a laptop just to have a linux handy, in fact it turned out that this laptop is now my active server and doesn't require any desktop environment anymore, but of course gnome 3 is installed. The installation was made via the debian installer for debian wheezy 7.0 this time, now it's 7.8 of course.

No I want to remove GNOME to save performance and stuff. So that's what I did.
Pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 to go to the terminal.
apt-get remove gnome-shell gdm3
apt-get clean
apt-get autoremove
apt-get -f install
Until now everything works fine, no problems removing something. But now I restart and see what's happening, and the debian breaks when booting up, reporting the following:

cannot execute "/opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/runsvdir-start"

I read how-tos and stuff and read that you usually should install a blank debian and install the desktop afterwards, since this requires the metapackages to install whic prevents autoremove to do some unwanted stuff.
Since I don't have these metapackages installed and I don't know which ones I need autoremove removes all packages which gnome depends on and therefore reomves packages which the system really needs, but I don't know which ones I'll have to reinstall.
Does anyone have some tips for me?
Reinstalling the whole system as blank without desktop is no option, to many packages and own builds are running on that system.

Thanks for your help.

Best Regards.

Timtam
 
Old 04-12-2015, 04:19 AM   #2
TobiSGD
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Where does /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/runsvdir-start come from? runsvdir-start is part of the Runit service manager and will not be installed into this obscur path when installing it from the Debian repositories. It rather seems to me that you have installed a third party software without using the package manager, so that the package manager isn't aware that this software exists and the autoremove function has removed a dependency of it.
 
Old 04-12-2015, 06:55 AM   #3
Timtam
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Hi and thanks for your reply.
I never installed something called runit manually, I only installed things without apt-get if I was forced to (meaning if not in the repository). And at least I never installed in /opt/, at least not as I remember. I googled about runit and found out that Debian uses it as alternative init system (see here http://smarden.org/runit/), so I expect it to be there since my first installation, but I don't know why. I'm also using init.d, at least all my init scripts are lying under /etc/init.d, so it's funny that runit is included in booting anyway. Can I try to remove runit manually (as far as I understand I don't need it anyway, since I've got initscripts) and try if removing gnome and autoremove works then?

Thanks.

Best Regards.
Timtam
 
Old 04-12-2015, 07:27 AM   #4
jlinkels
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You don't have to remove Gnome. Just set up that it doesn't start.
Code:
sudo update-rc.d -f gdm remove
Packages that are installed and don't run do not take up resources. It is not Windows.

I do not recommend to remove a desktop environment one it is installed. It is no use for the aforementioned reason.

Autoremove is something which I still don't understand why it was ever implemented. "Packages which are not needed anymore" is a lie. Many users face a broken system after autoremove. The bright side is that to correct this only a few packages (preferably with the most dependencies) have to be re-installed. Since the configuration was not purged this is a mostly seamless operation.

The /opt/gitlab thing seems to be related with git. As long as you do not develop and do not need a version control for your sources it is fine if it doesn't start anymore.

That having said, never, ever install something on a Debian system which does not come through apt. Even if you have to compile a package yourself, follow the Debian guidelines, create a .deb and apt-get install.

jlinkels
 
Old 04-12-2015, 08:37 AM   #5
Timtam
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Hi,

thanks for that idea, I tried it, as far as I know that wasn't supposed to work, since it is gdm3, not gdm, so I did:
sudo update-rc.d -f gdm3 remove

and then:
sudo reboot

And, even if I didn't remove anything with autoremove and stuff, I got the same problem when booting, meaning unable to execute... something.
What the hell is going on?
I'm now recovering my backup the fifth time and will try to check other possibilities I have, even if I don't know any yet. The last way would be backing up my package list and install debian 8 all brand new, but if you've got other ideas, please tell me.

Thanks for your help.
Best Regards.
Timtam
 
Old 04-12-2015, 09:34 AM   #6
jlinkels
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Yes, gdm3 is all right, whatever was starting up.

Try to find what is start the gitlab thing. Disable it or comment out.

This might help:
Code:
sudo find /etc -type f -exec grep -H runsvdir {} \;
jlinkels
 
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Old 04-12-2015, 02:15 PM   #7
Timtam
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I don't have any other clue what can cause that error, so I used your search line and this came out:
/etc/inittab:CS:123456:respawn:/opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/runsvdir-start

Hopefully you understand some more of it than me...

Timtam
 
Old 04-12-2015, 08:08 PM   #8
evo2
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Hi,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Timtam View Post
I don't have any other clue what can cause that error, so I used your search line and this came out:
/etc/inittab:CS:123456:respawn:/opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/runsvdir-start
Did you try commenting that line out of your /etc/inittab?

Evo2.
 
Old 04-12-2015, 09:46 PM   #9
jlinkels
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So that worked.

Like Evo said, you can comment out that line. It doesn't start now anyway.

I think it is rather rude to put the startup for a service in inittab, and it certainly is not the Debian way. It should have been a regular start/stop script in rcX.d. But since you are not using it anyway it is not important.

jlinkels
 
Old 04-19-2015, 04:24 AM   #10
Timtam
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Hi,

thanks, that worked. Commenting that line out did the trick. I'm now just trying to recognize how the line came into that file... but anyway, thank you all!
 
  


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