Arch Linux

w_bowman

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2013-01-21

Posts: 26

Website

[SOLVED] Getting rid of old libraries in /usr/lib

I am wanting to basically go back to the start with my Arch. I don't want to reinstall, since my partitions are fine. I have found

pacman -Rs $(comm -23 <(pacman -Qeq|sort) <((for i in $(pacman -Qqg base); do pactree -ul $i; done)|sort -u|cut -d ' ' -f 1)) 

on the wiki which allows me to remove all packages except for the base group.

The problem I am having is that all of my files are still there, including all the old libraries which is the root of the problem I am having. How do I get rid of everything except what is needed for the base group, i.e. basically how do I remove everything to get back to that 'fresh' install feel?

Last edited by w_bowman (2013-05-07 12:20:32)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of old libraries in /usr/lib

I think you should explain a bit more what you think the problem is.  Because this will certainly remove all packages not in the base group.  Maybe you also want the configuration files to me removed as well?

Can you indicate which libraries remain, and why you think they should be gone?  If you think something is there that shouldn't be after doing this, you can use "pacman -Qo <file/lib in question>" to determine which package owns the file or directory. 

Have you by chance installed anything from source without pacman?  This would certainly leave some crap behind since these files would be untracked by pacman.

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of old libraries in /usr/lib

The problem I am having is that all of my files are still there, including all the old libraries which is the root of the problem I am having.

So, you removed all packages except what is included in "base", but there are files that remain that you don't want on your computer? Which files? If they are not controlled by a package and you don't need them then you can just delete them.

As for the library files, do you mean the files that are generated by "ldconfig"? I don't have a lot of experience with it, but running "ldconfig" might delete the ones you don't need. Otherwise you can just delete them yourself.

w_bowman

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2013-01-21

Posts: 26

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of old libraries in /usr/lib

I think you should explain a bit more what you think the problem is.  Because this will certainly remove all packages not in the base group.  Maybe you also want the configuration files to me removed as well?

Can you indicate which libraries remain, and why you think they should be gone?  If you think something is there that shouldn't be after doing this, you can use "pacman -Qo <file/lib in question>" to determine which package owns the file or directory. 

Have you by chance installed anything from source without pacman?  This would certainly leave some crap behind since these files would be untracked by pacman.

I think this is what I have done. After a little more snooping around, I think I got rid of the problem, but once I run pacman -Syu and rebooted, I lost internet capabilities.
I am just going to do a fresh install, ease my troubles a bit.