Hey all,

As stated in previous posts, I'm one of those "Linux" users who've mainly used distributions with a binary package system. I'm used to being able to install, update and uninstall using some sort of tool.

With Slackware I've started compiling from source instead. It is going well for me, things are working and I'm very happy with Slackware so far. I have though one problem: How on earth do I uninstall/remove for example Postfix and/or Dovecot after having installed them from source?

The reason I want to remove them is so I can start all over and document every step I took to make it work.

Regards,
Thomas

I don't know if this applies to Postfix and Dovecot, but most programs have a 'make uninstall' target. This assumes you kept the source directory of course. If you did keep it, change to the source directory for the program and type:

Generally, I refer to this as creating a SlackBuild script :-)

Eric

I run Postfixfrom pre-built packages and it replaces some of the sendmail executables. If Dovecote behaves like courier-imap it replaces the functions of imapd and pop3d.

So to revert I would make the rc.postfix and whatever dovecote uses non-executable and reinstall sendamil, imapd and pop3d
This would leave some directories in /etc, but they won't do any harm

Thanks all.. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the two, so I just manually tracked down most of the files and deleted them. A recompile later I had my own little step by step guide written down, so all is well!

Kinda weird though that it should be so difficult to get rid of Postfix and Dovecot, just because they've been installed from source. Oh well..

Slackware also has a package management system that you can use to remove and install software. I use checkinstall when I compile from source to build packages for my own use and have never had a problem with it, although there are other ways/tools that you can use to make packages, including makepkg that is part of the slack package management system. Make uninstall isn't always an option with source packages, and even then sometimes they don't always remove everything they install. I've heard of problems even with using checkinstall, but can't say that I've ever had any myself. It's a lot easier to just be able to type removepkg blahblah instead of manually tracking down all the files installed imo