Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

dhave · 2008-06-24 17:52:49

I just ran "pacman -Qdt" and got a list of 133 packages that pacman (v. 3.1.4) evidently thinks are orphans. Normally this command produces a list of only a 10-20 packages. I haven't made radical changes to my system since the last time I ran this command, so I have to think there's been a change in the way pacman works. Can anyone enlighten me? Thanks.

Last edited by dhave (2008-07-05 21:38:45)

Allan · 2008-06-24 23:07:45

There has been no change to pacman that would be doing this... Anything in the list you think shouldn't be there?

Daenyth · 2008-06-24 23:39:45

It might help to post the output along with why you think it's wrong.

Leigh · 2008-06-25 07:23:28

Running pacman -Qdt here returned zero orphans. Using arch64.

dhave · 2008-06-25 09:37:54

I started to paste in two lists of orphans, one from a couple of months ago (13 packages) and one from yesterday (133 packages), then something occurred to me.

Twice in the interim I've run the new pacbuilder script on my core and extra packages. This automatically rebuilds all installed packages in the designated repository with the user's compilation flags. (Sure, I know, I could just switch back to Gentoo, but I've gotten spoiled by Arch's ease of use.)

I'm wondering if there's some reason that dependencies weren't properly tracked or something when I ran pacbuilder. The only option I used for pacbuilder was --verbose.

joephantom · 2008-06-25 09:55:26

Leigh wrote:

Running pacman -Qdt here returned zero orphans. Using arch64.

I get 21 orphans :S.

autoconf 2.62-1
automake 1.10.1-2
dosfstools 2.11-2
gnokii 0.6.22-3
hspell 1.0-2
hsqldb-java 1.8.0.9-1
libmal 0.42-1
libopensync 0.22-1
mime-types 1.0-1
nss-mdns 0.10-1
ocaml 3.10.2-1
perl-compress-zlib 2.006-1
ppp 2.4.4-6
pstoedit 3.45-2
python-elementtree 1.2.6_20050316-1
python-pyspi 0.6.1-2
rdesktop 1.6.0-2
sane 1.0.19-2
sharutils 4.6.3-1
tpctl 4.15-1
xalan-java 2.7.0-2

...

dhave · 2008-06-25 14:50:30

O.K., I think I'm getting to the bottom of this. Cimi, who wrote the excellent pacbuilder script, explained thusly:

Neither pacman nor pkg support local installation with -Qt, they both mark the packages as unrequired.
A fix would be to let pacbuilder create a custom local repository then install packages with pacman -S --config /etc/pacman-pacbuilder.conf package.

If I understand what he's saying, then packages installed by the pacbuilder script are local installations and are therefore treated as unrequired.

I've verified this by removing one of the the pacbuilder installed packages which was on my orphan list, then reinstalling it with "pacman -S". It disappeared from the orphan list.

So, at present, it appears that if you use pacbuilder, you will lose the ability to accurately list unrequired packages using "pacman -Qdt".

Allan · 2008-06-25 15:00:53

Are these just a bunch of makedepends that were installed to build a package but not actually needed once that was done? It seems an awful lot though...

dhave · 2008-06-25 15:23:37

Allan wrote:

Are these just a bunch of makedepends that were installed to build a package but not actually needed once that was done? It seems an awful lot though...

No, I don't think so. An example is xterm. After pacbuilder rebuilt and installed the xterm package, pacman treated it as an orphan.

Another example is xmms. After pacbuilder rebuilt and installed the xmms package, xmms appears as an orphan when I do "pacman -Qdt". Here's the output of "pacman -Qi xmms". Note the "Install Reason":

[root@thinkpad /]# pacman -Qi xmms
Name           : xmms
Version        : 1.2.11-1
URL            : http://www.xmms.org
Licenses       : GPL
Groups         : None
Provides       : None
Depends On     : libsm  libxxf86vm  zlib  gtk  libvorbis  esd  alsa-lib  libgl
Optional Deps  : None
Required By    : None
Conflicts With : None
Replaces       : None
Installed Size : 5238.75 K
Packager       : Unknown Packager
Architecture   : i686
Build Date     : Sun 25 May 2008 04:03:31 PM WET
Install Date   : Sun 25 May 2008 04:03:32 PM WET
Install Reason : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script : No
Description    : The X MultiMedia System

Then I used pacman -R to remove xmms, and reinstalled it using pacman -S. Now xmms no longer appears as an orphan when I do "pacman -Qdt". Here's the new output of "pacman -Qi xmms". You see that "Install Reason" has changed, and "Required By" remains the same:

[root@thinkpad /]# pacman -Qi xmms
Name           : xmms
Version        : 1.2.11-1
URL            : http://www.xmms.org
Licenses       : GPL
Groups         : None
Provides       : None
Depends On     : libsm  libxxf86vm  zlib  gtk  libvorbis  esd  alsa-lib  libgl
Optional Deps  : None
Required By    : None
Conflicts With : None
Replaces       : None
Installed Size : 5727.38 K
Packager       : Eric Belanger <eric@archlinux.org>
Architecture   : i686
Build Date     : Thu 06 Dec 2007 12:39:22 AM WET
Install Date   : Wed 25 Jun 2008 05:12:14 PM WEST
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : No
Description    : The X MultiMedia System

Allan · 2008-06-25 15:29:42

OK. This sounds like a pacbuilder bug... It must use something like "pacman -U --asdep" for all packages (?).

dhave · 2008-06-25 16:59:57

Allan wrote:

OK. This sounds like a pacbuilder bug... It must use something like "pacman -U --asdep" for all packages (?).

Yep, as best I can tell from perusing the script, those options for pacman are enabled, at least in some cases.

Last edited by dhave (2008-06-25 17:51:09)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-06-24 17:52:49

Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#2 2008-06-24 23:07:45

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#3 2008-06-24 23:39:45

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#4 2008-06-25 07:23:28

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#5 2008-06-25 09:37:54

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#6 2008-06-25 09:55:26

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#7 2008-06-25 14:50:30

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#8 2008-06-25 15:00:53

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#9 2008-06-25 15:23:37

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#10 2008-06-25 15:29:42

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

#11 2008-06-25 16:59:57

Re: Way too many orphans [SOLVED - or diagnosed, anyway]

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