Arch Linux

highway

Member

Registered: 2012-07-28

Posts: 81

[solved] Proper way to uninstall non-Arch packages

At some point, a number of years ago, I apparently installed some things to /usr/bin for nodejs via npm. I now clearly see why this is bad practice, and this location is not preferred over, say, /usr/local/bin or basically anywhere else.

I was able to remove a few packages like bower, ionic, and cordova via 'sudo npm uninstall -g <package>'

Can anyone help me find a way to identify:

1) if there is a way to uninstall these via any kind of manager or find out what files they are linked to in the OS (so I can remove those too).
2) what is the proper way to remove these
3) which of these should I leave alone

Using a program like 'lostfiles' in pacman, I am presented with this list.

/usr/bin/bluez-simple-agent~
/usr/bin/express
/usr/bin/jsonlint
/usr/bin/jsonschema
/usr/bin/lostfiles
/usr/bin/mid3cp
/usr/bin/mid3iconv
/usr/bin/mid3v2
/usr/bin/moggsplit
/usr/bin/mutagen-inspect
/usr/bin/mutagen-pony
/usr/bin/ng
/usr/bin/nosetests
/usr/bin/nosetests-3.4
/usr/bin/pbr
/usr/bin/pinentry.pacnew
/usr/bin/vi.old
/usr/bin/wheel

Last edited by highway (2018-08-25 00:45:57)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,541

Website

Re: [solved] Proper way to uninstall non-Arch packages

There is no globally correct way to uninstall things that you did not install with pacman.  The only reasonable answer to that question is what you already have: if you installed with pip, remove with pip; if you installed with npm, remove with npm.  If those package managers fail to fully/properly remove something that they installed, then that should be considered a bug in that (non-arch) package manager and it should be raised with the pip/npm/etc maintainers.

If you just need to clean up after some other package manager that is not doing what it should for removal, then `lostfiles` is the tool you need.  But as you are already using that, I'm not really sure what question remains.  You found many "lost files", remove them and if you wish to continue using them, follow this by installing them properly.

Last edited by Trilby (2018-08-25 00:17:42)

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

highway

Member

Registered: 2012-07-28

Posts: 81

Re: [solved] Proper way to uninstall non-Arch packages

There is no globally correct way to uninstall things that you did not install with pacman.  The only reasonable answer to that question is what you already have: if you installed with pip, remove with pip; if you installed with npm, remove with npm.  If those package managers fail to fully/properly remove something that they installed, then that should be considered a bug in that (non-arch) package manager and it should be raised with the pip/npm/etc maintainers.

If you just need to clean up after some other package manager that is not doing what it should for removal, then `lostfiles` is the tool you need.  But as you are already using that, I'm not really sure what question remains.  You found many "lost files", remove them and if you wish to continue using them, follow this by installing them properly.

Thanks, I am going to try to get rid of some more via NPM, but they don't seem to be going. I was able to rename the problem one (jsonschema) after checking that there was basically no text inside of the file. This was conflicting with something from pacman. I will have to be more careful in the future.

Thanks!