Arch Linux

dervish

Member

Registered: 2018-06-15

Posts: 24

[Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

I noticed that 'pcmciautils' disappeared from official repositories.

$ pacman -Syy
$ pacman -Ss pcmciautils
..nothing..

Now the system believes that this is foreign package.

$ pacman -Qm
pcmciautils 018-8

He was in Extra repository, and in Base group.
He became unnecessary? Delete it?

Last edited by dervish (2018-06-29 09:25:53)

dervish

Member

Registered: 2018-06-15

Posts: 24

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

It seems we should remove it:
https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/a … 29270.html

dervish

Member

Registered: 2018-06-15

Posts: 24

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

If maintainers clean up the repos what should users do?
They may not even know that they have old unnecessary packages.
Are there any notices about these events?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,134

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

To list all packages no longer required as dependencies (orphans)
$ pacman -Qdt

Tip: Add the above command to a pacman post-transaction hook to be notified if a transaction orphaned a package. This can be useful for being notified when a package has been dropped from a repository, since any dropped package will also be orphaned on a local installation (unless it was explicitly installed). To avoid any "failed to execute command" errors when no orphans are found, use the following command for Exec in your hook: /usr/bin/bash -c "/usr/bin/pacman -Qtd || /usr/bin/echo '=> None found.'"

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … _databases
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … orphans.29

Edit: Not applicable in this case, see below.

Last edited by V1del (2018-06-29 09:12:55)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 12,067

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

It was part of base, so it won't be an "orphan"

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 475

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

It was part of base, so it won't be an "orphan"

This should be mentioned in Wiki somewhere here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … orphans.29

Like: For recursively removing orphans (not installed as part of base group) and their configuration files:

Nevermind!

I misunderstood the statement .... as "package which are part of base (group) are not considered as orphan!"

I should have read it as:
... so it won't be an "orphan" because its explicitly installed.

Last edited by amish (2018-06-29 08:36:58)

dervish

Member

Registered: 2018-06-15

Posts: 24

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

To list all packages no longer required as dependencies (orphans)
$ pacman -Qdt

It's not about what I wrote about.
'pcmciautils' is not orphan.

Last edited by dervish (2018-06-29 08:20:18)

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 475

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

Ah ok - it was explicitly installed.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,134

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

Ah yeah right my bad, well there isn't going to be announcment of every package change on the news page, you could subscribe to the mailing list, subscribe to  the package removal RSS feed (in general look at the available feeds) or use some other intermediate utility, e.g. some of the currently active AUR helpers should give a list for packages found in neither the AUR or the repos

dervish

Member

Registered: 2018-06-15

Posts: 24

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

subscribe to  the package removal RSS feed (in general look at the available feeds)

Thanks! All clear.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,330

Website

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

AUR helpers?

No, `pacman -Qm`.  You should recognize everything in the pacman -Qm output.  Or if you happen to have a lot of AUR dependencies, you should definitely recognize and know exactly why you have every result of `pacman -Qme`.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

dervish

Member

Registered: 2018-06-15

Posts: 24

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

Trilby, I think this can be specified at wiki-page - Pacman / Tips_and_tricks,
somewhere after 1.4 Removing unused packages (orphans)
How to check and if necessary remove such packages.
Unfortunately my English does not give me the opportunity to correctly add this to the wiki.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,330

Website

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

Perhaps it could go after that section, but it's not really related to it.  Unfortunately 'orphan' is used in two different ways to refer to packages - and other than both being potential targets of system clean up, there really isn't any overlap in the meaning (one being packages installed as dependencies that are not longer needed, the other being packages that have been dropped from the repos).

Anyone can add it to the wiki - but to me it seems a bit redundant - though I suppose there is precedent in that page already for such things.  I think entries in that page that have some short script or pipeline to do some complex but occasionally very handy check is worthwhile - but the entries that are really just examples of basic use of pacman's flags are neither really "tip" nor "trick".  Perhaps "Tips and Tricks" number 0 should be `man pacman`.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,258

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

In my opinion, the best way to integrate it into the wiki would be extending the "Listing packages" tip. I amended that "foreign" packages also include packages removed from the repositories.

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| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' |

amish

Member

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 475

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

... subscribe to  the package removal RSS feed ...

This actually does not help in knowing which package was removed forever from repo, as it lists all upgraded packages too. i.e. old version replaced by new version.

So regularly running pacman -Qm is the only option.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,134

Re: [Solved] What happened to 'pcmciautils'?

It should list the correct ones if you don't use the all repos feed, as that one includes testing which naturally will have many packages removed and added