Arch Linux

victoroux

Member

Registered: 2013-05-17

Posts: 13

[Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

Hello,

I installed a few packages (package-query and yaourt at least) from AUR. I cannot see these packages with pacman and yaourt is not working properly. I'm trying to remove with:

sudo pacman -R yaourt

But it gives the error

error: target not found: yaourt

However, typing

yaourt --version

gives:

yaourt 1.8.1
homepage: http://archlinux.fr/yaourt-en

Is there a way for me to see these "hidden" packages, and more importantly to remove them? I've tried the commands from the wiki already and a few of the methods listed on the forums. Can't seem to even find people that are sharing this issue yet.

Thank you

Last edited by victoroux (2016-03-11 20:24:03)

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,735

Website

Re: [Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

Are you sure they are packages? You haven't done something daft like install them with './configure; make; sudo make install'?

If you haven't done that, then perhaps you have a similarly named package (e.g. yoaurt-git). Check what pacman knows about with, e.g. 'pacman -Qs yaourt'.

Also check what owns the yaourt binary with 'pacman -Qo $(which yaourt)'

Last edited by WorMzy (2016-03-11 20:10:03)

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jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: [Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

How did you install yaourt? What is the output of `which yaourt`?

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Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,357

Website

Re: [Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

There is no such thing as "hidden" packages.  Clearly yaourt exists on your system, and just as clearly, it is not in pacman's database.  Either 'yaourt' is not the exact package name, or you installed yaourt in a way that circumvented pacman.

To check the former, try either of the following (or both):

pacman -Qs yaourt
pacman -Qm

To remove a package you need the full package name.  This might be yaourt-git, for example.

If you installed yaourt circumventing pacman then there is no easy way to clean up the mess.  You'd have to find every file installed and remove them yourself.  We *might* be able to help with this if you tell us exactly how you installed it in the first place.

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

Earnestly

Member

Registered: 2011-08-18

Posts: 805

Re: [Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

Use pacman -Qo yaourt to determine if any package owns it.  If none do feel free to remove it.  Make sure to check other files on the system but be aware that lots of software can generate "ghost files" so remove with discretion.

victoroux

Member

Registered: 2013-05-17

Posts: 13

Re: [Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

Haven't used Arch in 3 years, was on a fresh system. I did indeed fuck up and go the way of ./configure make install. I'll simply re-install arch clean. Was still figuring out how to use AUR packages for the first time. Learned about makepkg -sri afterwards. Now I have an even better understanding of how it all works. Thank you, all

Out of curiousity, where exactly did the package install to? I deleted the home directory in which I configured/built all the other packages and where yaourt was also make installed.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,357

Website

Re: [Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

You can read the makefile to see what it actually did.  If you ran `make install` as root then the files will be at various locations (/usr/bin/yaourt, /etc/..., possibly /usr/share/...).  If you installed only to your home directory with something like `make install DESTDIR=/home/me/opt' then cleaning up would be as easy as emptying out /home/me/opt.  But I suspect you ran make install as root and installed to the root filesystem.

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

victoroux

Member

Registered: 2013-05-17

Posts: 13

Re: [Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

I think that's what happened as well; did it through chroot from a live usb. Remembered seeing errors when trying to use yaourt that was looking for a file that didn't exist sharing some familiarity of those path names. But no worries, re-installing, and have learned my lesson!

Earnestly

Member

Registered: 2011-08-18

Posts: 805

Re: [Solved] Cannot uninstall AUR packages "error: target not found"

Reinstalling Arch Linux is unnecessary, you can easily determine the files yaourt has installed by reading the Makefile or replaying the installation target in a separate DESTDIR and simply remove the respective files, it's possible to methodically double check your actions along the way too.

[n.b. The de-facto standard in Makefiles is that the PREFIX is set to /usr/local so it is quite likely to have installed there, package managers as a policy tend to not touch that directory as it's for use by local admins.]

pacman -Qo is the principle way of determining file ownership which can be used to find potentially orphaned files but you have to be careful about "ghost files", as in my previous post.

The general rule is that all files under / should be owned by a package, outside of ghost files other exceptions to this rule include /home, /usr/local, and the pseudo-filesystems such as /proc.

Last edited by Earnestly (2016-03-11 20:50:29)