how to uninstall a application

jkdas12 · 12-07-2006, 03:32 AM

how to uninstall an application under linux system.
please help me.

b0uncer · 12-07-2006, 03:44 AM

It depends on how you installed it.

1) if it was a binary (package like .rpm or .deb or something else), use the appropriate tool; either a package manager or the binary package installer command (rpm, dpkg, apt-get, ...).

2) if you compiled the piece of software from source, it depends on the creator of the code; some sources include a special make command like

Code:

make uninstall

that can be executed in the source tree, but some just don't. In this case you'll just have to manually remove each installed file, and that does mean some work (there are nice tools for this type of software compilations too, that create a list of installed files during the installation - "make install" or equivalent - and you can use that information to remove the files).

To be able to help you better, you must provide more information:

- how did you install the software; was it
-preinstalled with the system (i.e. during the setup)
-installed using a package manager (yum, apt, pacman, ...)
-compiled from source (and if, then how)
-installed as a binary package using rpm, dpkg, ...

Simon Bridge · 12-07-2006, 03:45 AM

This is different for different systems, and it depends on the application as well as how it was installed.

More information needed.

Sometimes it is just a matter of deleting the application binary.

If the application was installed from source, there may be a make uninstall option in the makefile... otherwise you have to walk through the install steps, removing files in reverse order they were added.

If the app was installed via a package manager gui (say, YaST, YOU, YUM, Synaptic, etc) then the managers documentation will tell you about the "uninstall" or "remove" method.

CLI package managers (rpm, aptitude, etc) also have "remove" or "uninstall" options. Again, check the program documentation.

Otherwise, you'll have to be more specific.
What are you trying to remove, and what have you tried?

fatra2 · 12-07-2006, 04:30 AM

If the package (software) is an .rpm, you can uninstall it by doing

Quote:

rpm -e name_of_software

manishsingh4u · 12-07-2006, 05:16 AM

It depends on which distribution you are using.

1) For (*.rpm) based distributions like Redhat, Fedora Core, SUSE, Madrake, etc, use this to get the exact program name first because, the program name is not exactly same as the the rpm file name.

Code:

rpm -qa | grep programname

Then use this to remove it.

Code:

rpm -e programname

2) For (*.deb) based distributins like Debian, Ubuntu, Mepis, etc,-)
-> To remove the program but, keep the configuration files for the program, use this

Code:

dpkg -r programname

-> To remove everything including configuration files, use this

Code:

dpkg -P programname

3) For (*.tgz) based distribtion like Slackware, use

Code:

pkgtool

and select the package which you wish to remove. There are more options available for Slackware which I don't remember right now. Hope this helps.

Simon Bridge · 12-07-2006, 07:24 PM

Yeah - and ubuntu is more likely to be apt-get -remove <package name> or aptitude -remove <package name> ... then there's gentoo's "emerge" and all the rest of it.

Lets wait for jkdas12 to get back on this before giving specific advise huh? We'll only end up writing pages and pages of irrelevant material. (Possibly jkdas12 was expecting something like the windows "add/remove program" option... which exists in some distros - but only works for software installed via a distro-specific installer: like up2date in RHEL)