Well, I was running up2date on my Red Hat 9 box, and I noticed a lot of packages are getting updated, that frankly, I didn't know I even installed. So, I would like to get rid of them.

I looked in the /opt folder, and there was nothing. I browsed around some other folders in the file system, and nothing catches my eye, but I know that I could do some streamlining.

I read up about the rpm and what.not, but I can't find a way to remove packages that I feel are unnecessary, or where to find those packages in the first place!

I tried slack, but since I had an IDE CD.ROM and a SCSI HD, it was giving me hell to install it, so I decided to just tone down my Red Hat 9 installation, and maybe even do a kernel compile.

The first thing I would like to do however, is get rid of some packages. I'd rather not just delete them, if there's a nice way to get rid of them, I'd appreciate someone pointing me to it. Thanks.

tobz

well you can type rpm -qa |less in the prompt to go through what rpm packages are installed and then after you find the ones you don't want you can type rpm -e packagename to rid them.

... i just read you are interested in doing a kernel compile so here is a step by step i made with explanations of each step, so it don't get any easier then this, so you can look at it and attempt it at a time that suits you..
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...355#post379355

oh and also you can type:
redhat-config-packages at the prompt and a gui interface will pop up after you enter the root password and you can scroll through packages that way also....but the packages shown in this screen will be less then what is shown in the step i told you in the previous post....these packages are the ones you installed off the cd and thats all thats shown in this screen...and of course you can add any packages you feel you missed during the installation in this screen.

Thank you very much, 2 packages down, and as it looks, about 200 to go. One other quicky for ya...

My up2date specifically won't update the kernel, I tried passing the -i to install everything no matter what, but it still skips it, is there a way to force the kernel update?

TIA

tobz

well if its skipping it then i don't think its a good idea to force it there must be reasoning behind that... and you say you pass the -i argument? does that mean you are using up2date in console? if so did you try the gui of up2date?

Well, I did a text only install for my server, no X, no KDE, and no Gnome. Is there a text based package manager? Just curious, thanks for the step by step kernel link that will help tons!

tobz

i am not sure if there is or not....the only way i can see doing it in the terminal is by the way i posted earlier with doing the query.. if you have a mind set on knowing what you want uninstalled then you can narrow your query like so:
rpm -qa |grep packagename
for example on my machine when i type:]
rpm -qa|grep mozilla my results are the following:
mozilla-chat-1.0.2-2.8.0
mozilla-nss-1.0.2-2.8.0
mozilla-1.0.2-2.8.0
mozilla-nspr-1.0.2-2.8.0
mozilla-psm-1.0.2-2.8.0
mozilla-mail-1.0.2-2.8.0
which using grep just scans for the key word mozilla and picks only them packages so now i see them all and can easily remove them without sorting through all the packages looking for everything mozilla related manually..

I know from the past that redhat skips the really important packages/updates like new kernel versions and such and with the GUI manager, you can select them and force them in. However, with the text only, it just keeps skipping them. Thanks for your help. Yes I am using up2date, but the text version, since I don't have X.

As I am deleting these packages, I notice that some have 1 - 3 letter names and I don't really know what they are. I tried searching google to find out what the packages are, but that takes a LONG time to figure out what each one does. I looked on the redhat site, but is there a site out there that has a bunch of linux packages along with a basic description of them? That would be really timesaving.

Thanks.

tobz

well i don't know about a basic explanation on the packages, maybe looking in /usr/share/doc you may find some more info on some packages but i have no idea about websites that strip down each package and explain them, as of the rpm you may be able to get away with something like :
rpm -ivh --force packname
or..
rpm -Uvh --force package

may or may not matter which one you use.

Thanks. I notice a lot of XFree86 stuff... What is that? I'm trying to remove them, but there are a lot of wierd dependancies, i.e. xinitrc

tobz

http://at.rpmfind.net/opsys/linux/RP....0-2.i386.html
you can read that little description and i am sure you'll get the idea of what xfree86 is

ahh, thanks. Don't need it, but I've found it to be a pain in the arse to get rid of, it depends on packages.. that depend on IT. Oh well, maybe there's a way to force removal of a package even though it has dependencies. Thanks for all your help DrOzz

tobz

Hey, while you're right here helping me out, do you happen to know of an IRC server that works? I'm trying to sit in on the #linux channels to learn, but I can't get connected to ANY server, I even tried searching google for servers, and I can't seem to connect to them.

tobz

well the only ones i know that work and its only because they are the only ones i use are:
irc.skene.net
east.gamesnet.net
which i doubt either will have a linux channel
but then again you'll know its something on your end thats not working and thats it not the server if you can't connect to them..

Well, it must be something on my end, since I cannot connect to either of those. lol, this whole time I thought every IRC server just happened to go down. It must be firewalled or something from where I'm at. Oh well.

Thanks for all the help!

tobz