How to completely remove all traces of LIRC
 

Hi all:

First off, I'd like to thank all of you who help out here. You folks are great,
and I appreciate the time and thought you put in here.

My question: I have KnoppMyth R5A12 (Debian Sarge 2.6.9 customized kernel)
onto which I've installed lirc 0.7.0 . I need to be able to uninstall lirc completely,
removing all traces of its existence. Since I didn't install it via Apt, I cannot
uninstall it that way. Now, I know if I type:

I will get a list of all the files on the root drive which contain lirc in their filenames.
Is there some way to pipe that info to a "rm" command, so I can delete all the
files that are found? Would that be safe? Is there a safer way?


Thanks

newmoon

It's not really safe to do it that way. You may have files from other programs with lirc in their name, e.g. xine-lirc or something.

You dont say how you did install it, but if it was from source you could go back to the source directory and try using.

D'OH! I can't believe I forgot about that. I did install via source.
"Use the source, Luke...use the source."

Don't know where my brain was, but I guess that's why this site is so great.
I'll give it a try and get back to you with results.

Thanks so much.

newmoon

Thanks guys. I did a "make uninstall", and that cleaned up a lot of the files.

However, when I ran a "find" command, I noticed there were still some files with
lirc in their names. I also thought to look at Synaptic and acording to Synaptic,
there are still some lirc-related packages installed. Is it safe to remove these? (filenames found below)

[code]
l
root@box:~# find / | grep lirc
/dev/lircresults.txt
/home/mythtv/.lircrc
/usr/include/lirc
/usr/include/lirc/lirc_client.h
/usr/lib/liblirc_client.a
/usr/lib/liblirc_client.la
/usr/lib/liblirc_client.so
/usr/lib/liblirc_client.so.0
/usr/lib/liblirc_client.so.0.0.0
/usr/local/include/lirc
/usr/share/aclocal/lirc.m4
/usr/share/doc/liblircclient-dev
/usr/share/doc/liblircclient-dev/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/liblircclient-dev/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/liblircclient-dev/copyright
/usr/share/doc/liblircclient0
/usr/share/doc/liblircclient0/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/liblircclient0/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/liblircclient0/copyright
/usr/share/modass/packages/lirc-modules-source
/usr/src/ivtv-0.3.2s/doc/README.lirc
/usr/src/ivtv-0.3.2s/utils/lircd.conf
/usr/src/ivtv-0.3.2s/utils/lircd-g.conf
/var/lib/dpkg/info/liblircclient-dev.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/liblircclient-dev.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/liblircclient0.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/liblircclient0.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/liblircclient0.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/liblircclient0.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/liblircclient0.shlibs
/var/lib/dpkg/info/lirc-modules-source.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/lirc-modules-source.postrm
root@box:~#


Thanks again for your help and patience.

newmoon

All those should be fine, except I wouldn't recommend the following (just to be on the safe side):
Just in case something else relies on those libraries. You could check some of the files you are unsure about for a timestamp, if they haven't been touched in a long time, or were just created recently (when you installed) then blow them away. Just be smart about it, a few extra kb on your drive is better than having to hassle with header files and the like.

Thanks very much. That should help. Oh, I'm not one of those anal guys who worries about the tiny files. The reason I'm cleaning everything up is because I had lirc 0.7.0 installed, and it behaved very erratically. And because I may have already had some version of lirc installed before I installed 0.7.0, I was advised by some helpful forum members to clear out all traces of lirc and then install it again from scratch. That way, I'll be sure to avoid conflicts, and hopefully fix the erratic behaviour I had.

newmoon

No problem, hopefully you get it fixed. It could be a long process, but you could remove a few files (or back them up then remove them), try installing lirc, then see if it still has problems, otherwise fully remove the files.
I'm sure you'll get a workable solution figured out :cool:

Another (similar) way is to rename the files, e.g. /usr/lib/liblirc_client.a -> /usr/lib/aaa-liblirc_client.a

(The "aaa" prefix just makes it easy to find as it will be at the top of the list.)

Rename it back again if it's needed, otherwise delete it whenever.

Well, apparently that wasn't such a good idea. I removed what was recommended (not
pointing fingers, just explaining) and as a result, Myth wouldn't start.

When I ran mythfrontend from a console, I got some error something to the effect of:

"Myth could not start. The library lirc_client is missing "
(Again, not the exact error, but something to that effect.)


I had uninstalled the lirc_client from Synaptic. Who knew Myth would refuse to start
without it.

I had some relatives from out of town in to see the box, so for the time being, I just
reinstalled lirc_client 0.7.1pre and then Myth ran again. However, I still haven't achieved my
original goal, which is to eliminate all traces of lirc except for what I want to install.

Should I now uninstall the above package and install lirc 0.7.0 from source? Will that install
the lirc_client module that Myth apparently requires to run?

For future reference, is there some way to tell Myth NOT to require lirc, in case it isn't
working or isn't installed?


Thanks again for your help and your patience.


newmoon

Hehe, I take it you skipped over my advice about:
1. Checking timestamps of the files
2. Backing up or renaming the files instead of hard deleting them
:)
Like I said, it could be a slow process.
I don't know much about MythTV (obviously ;) ) but if you compile it from source there likely is a configure switch to disable the reliance on lirc_client.

VGUI:

Thanks for that. I actually hadn't seen your advice. It often takes a while for answers to show up, and I thought I'd just go ahead and give removal a try.
And good advice it was, because it probably would've helped me avoid this
problem.

Apparently, I need lirc_client. I really don't know what to do next. What I want is for there to be no trace of any lirc and then I want to install lirc 0.7.0 from source. Will doing that provide everything Myth needs to run?




newmoon

So where you stand right now is MythTV is not working because it is asking for lirc_client. And reinstalling lirc_client 0.7.1pre doesn't work for you?
Maybe try recompiling from http://www.lirc.org/ (but not installing, just copy over the lirc_client binary you need). That should give you lirc_client no? If not, maybe it is included somewhere with MythTV, or possibly on your install CDs, or maybe Google could turn up a fairly generic precompiled lirc_client? I mean, it has to be _somewhere_ online, one would hope.

Sorry, I must not have made myself clear. Myth currently runs. But as soon as I
remove the lirc_client package, it will not run. I'm wondering whether installing
lirc from source will install everything needed for Myth to run. That's all.

Thanks again.


newmoon

What about if you copy lirc_client somewhere safe, then remove the lirc package, then move lirc_client back to it's original location? That way you just have one offending lirc file.
Installing lirc from source likely installs the same files as the package, which would leave you back at square 1. I imagine the dependency on lirc could be removed from MythTV if MythTV itself was recompiled from source.
So, I would try some of the following (all with necessary backups, etc.):

1. Copy lirc_client, remove lirc package, move lirc_client back, try MythTV
2. Remove lirc package, install from source, try MythTV
3. Recompile MythTV from source and try to remove lirc dependency
4. Look in MythTV docs to see if there is a way to remove or ignore lirc dependency

Safest bet would just be to leave lirc installed from the package. That way MythTV runs fine, and you are just left with the extra lirc package.

If you compile MythTV from source there is an option to disable lirc supprt.

(I knew there was a good reason to run Gentoo :))