Howto remove xorg dummy package

chicha · 2007-11-28 20:50:21

Hello,

I am making some cleanup on the packages installed on my system.

I found out that I have the package xorg-11R7.0-1 so called "X.Org dummy package" installed.
It seems xorg is no more installed with this dummy package but with the group xorg.

When I try to remove the package xorg (pacman -R xorg) pacman wants to remove the group.
How can I remove the dummy package only ?

As the package xorg-11R7.0-1 did not installed any files on the system I was thinking about removing the entry in pacman's database :

rm -r /var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1

Is xorg-11R7.0-1 (dummy package) deprecated, or is it still usefull for the system ?
Am I doing well removing it this way ?
Is there any other (better) way to do this ?

Thank you very much for your help
Cheers

shining · 2007-11-28 21:43:18

Indeed, I proposed a patch for this when I noticed this problem :
http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacm … 09300.html

I basically proposed -R for removing packages only, -Rg for removing groups only.
Then followed a lengthy discussion.

A quick sum up:
* By symmetry, the same problem exists with -S (you can't specify to install the group or the package if both existed).
So if -Rg tried to remove a group, probably -Sg should try installing a group, to keep the options consistent
* The -Sg option already exists for displaying packages (However, this could be moved to -Slg)
* Backward compatibility should be kept for not confusing user. That is :
-S foo -> if foo package is not found, try installing the foo group
-R foo -> if foo package is not found, try removing the foo group (my patch did not keep this behavior)

I ended up slightly confused and less motivated.
Also, I didn't like much the "fallback on group" feature from a code perspective. This makes the code ugly,
and I didn't find a way that satisfied me.

So I just forgot this issue and worked on other things instead.
I'm thinking I should have written a bug report for easier reference on this problem.

pressh · 2007-11-29 08:35:17

Chicha, to answer your question (I didn't see it in Shinings post, but it is still early in the morning), remove it with the -Rd switch

shining · 2007-11-29 12:08:42

pressh wrote:

Chicha, to answer your question (I didn't see it in Shinings post, but it is still early in the morning), remove it with the -Rd switch

Uhm, I don't know what -Rd has to do with this.

Sorry if it wasn't clear, what I meant is that the only good way is to patch pacman, but it hasn't been done yet, only discussed a while ago.
Now, you can indeed do it manually, it's just very ugly
For a metapackage, I guess you only have to remove the entry in the db indeed.
There are also the %REQUIREDBY% entries for the dependencies of the xorg metapackage. But anyway, this field has been affected by several bugs, and many of them are wrong. pacman 3.1 won't even use it anymore, so it doesn't matter.

The second way is to actually remove the group, then remove the metapackage, then reinstall the group. That's usually pretty quick. Especially if you kept the packages in the cache, but otherwise it's only a ~30 MB download.

dolby · 2007-11-29 12:51:32

i had removed the xorg dummy pkg some time ago by with pacman -R xorg IIRC and then installed the newly created group with pacman -S xorg. No, the dummy package is not need anywhere anymore

attila · 2007-11-29 13:05:36

dolby wrote:

i had removed the xorg dummy pkg some time ago by with pacman -R xorg IIRC and then installed the newly created group with pacman -S xorg. No, the dummy package is not need anywhere anymore

And what would happens if i make a "pacman -S xorg" and say yes to all questions? Sorry, remove and reinstall the same sounds not so nice

@shining: I hope your suggestions will go to pacman because they sounds more understandable and they helps to avoid crying after doing a not-so-wanted "pacman -R"

dolby · 2007-11-29 13:18:31

attila wrote:

dolby wrote:
i had removed the xorg dummy pkg some time ago by with pacman -R xorg IIRC and then installed the newly created group with pacman -S xorg. No, the dummy package is not need anywhere anymore
And what would happens if i make a "pacman -S xorg" and say yes to all questions? Sorry, remove and reinstall the same sounds not so nice

i dont know nor take responsibility for your actions. linux is supposed to be fun. try it and find out

edit: the only question i remember pacman asking was if i wanted to install the whole group. which i didnt. heres my pacman log if that helps

[2007-10-27 00:20] removed xorg (11R7.0-1)
[2007-10-27 00:20] removed xf86-input-keyboard (1.1.1-1)
[2007-10-27 00:20] removed xf86-input-mouse (1.2.1-1)
[2007-10-27 00:20] removed xf86-video-vesa (1.3.0-1)
[2007-10-27 00:20] removed xorg-xinit (1.0.7-1)
[2007-10-27 00:20] removed xorg-xauth (1.0.1-1)
[2007-10-27 00:20] synchronizing package lists
[2007-10-27 00:20] starting full system upgrade
[2007-10-27 00:22] installed xorg-xauth (1.0.1-1)
[2007-10-27 00:22] installed xorg-xinit (1.0.7-1)
[2007-10-27 00:22] installed xf86-input-keyboard (1.1.1-1)
[2007-10-27 00:22] installed xf86-input-mouse (1.2.1-1)

Last edited by dolby (2007-11-29 13:24:49)

attila · 2007-11-29 17:13:06

dolby wrote:

i dont know nor take responsibility for your actions. linux is supposed to be fun. try it and find out

Thanks for the motivation and the info. I try a "pacman -Sp(w) xorg" but it don't say that it wants to remove anything so i will test it in a more experimental moment At the moment i can live with it that xorg is the only one which will be show with a "pacman -Qm"

What i really miss in pacman is the possibility to test it first as at example "pacman -R (or -S) --test xorg" to take a look that all happens as i wants it. But i must say that normally the need of this feature is very seldom.

Edit: Okay, because there is update of xorg-server i try first "pacman -S xorg" (nothing gets deleted) and than i go your way "pacman -Rd xorg && pacman -S xorg". In both cases "pacman -Qm" shows me this magical 'xorg 11R7.0-1'. I think now my job as a normal user is over and i suggest to implement the nice features from shining

Last edited by attila (2007-11-29 17:26:04)

shining · 2007-11-29 17:45:26

attila wrote:

dolby wrote:
i dont know nor take responsibility for your actions. linux is supposed to be fun. try it and find out
Thanks for the motivation and the info. I try a "pacman -Sp(w) xorg" but it don't say that it wants to remove anything so i will test it in a more experimental moment At the moment i can live with it that xorg is the only one which will be show with a "pacman -Qm"
What i really miss in pacman is the possibility to test it first as at example "pacman -R (or -S) --test xorg" to take a look that all happens as i wants it. But i must say that normally the need of this feature is very seldom.
Edit: Okay, because there is update of xorg-server i try first "pacman -S xorg" (nothing gets deleted) and than i go your way "pacman -Rd xorg && pacman -S xorg". In both cases "pacman -Qm" shows me this magical 'xorg 11R7.0-1'. I think now my job as a normal user is over and i suggest to implement the nice features from shining

Looks like you didn't understand what the issue was.
You have both a xorg group, and a xorg metapackage installed.
A first pacman -R xorg will try to remove xorg group only (that is, all locally installed packages from the xorg group).
You need to remove them all.
Then a second pacman -R xorg will only now remove the xorg dummy package.
Finally pacman -S xorg will reinstall (all members from) the xorg group.

Edit : pacman usually shows the targets to be removed / installed, you need to press Enter for actually doing it. At least, it does it when it's useful.
So no need for a --test option.

Last edited by shining (2007-11-29 17:47:28)

Cerebral · 2007-11-29 18:14:33

disable the extra repo in /etc/pacman.conf by commenting it:

# [extra]
# Include = /etc/pacman.d/extra

Then pacman -Sy

Then pacman -R xorg

attila · 2007-11-29 18:23:20

shining wrote:

Looks like you didn't understand what the issue was.
You have both a xorg group, and a xorg metapackage installed.

Ah okay, thanks now i understand it and i will give it a try.

shining wrote:

Edit : pacman usually shows the targets to be removed / installed, you need to press Enter for actually doing it. At least, it does it when it's useful.
So no need for a --test option.

The important word is 'usually' because my experiences is that a "pacman -R" don't ask me anything in the most cases. You be right that in this case all is only one "pacman -S" away but i will feel better with '--test'.

Cerebral wrote:

disable the extra repo in /etc/pacman.conf by commenting it:

This does not works for me.

Cerebral · 2007-11-29 18:29:19

attila wrote:

Cerebral wrote:
disable the extra repo in /etc/pacman.conf by commenting it:
This does not works for me.

You mean disabling [extra], then running pacman -R xorg doesn't work? Does it still try to remove the group? That's unfortunate - I had hoped group information wasn't stored in the localdb.

attila · 2007-11-29 18:41:57

Cerebral wrote:

You mean disabling [extra], then running pacman -R xorg doesn't work? Does it still try to remove the group? That's unfortunate - I had hoped group information wasn't stored in the localdb.

What i want to say is that after disabling extra and a "pacman -Sy" (as a recommend by you) a "pacman -R xorg" wants to delete the group instead of the metapackage. But now for me the story is over because i do a double "pacman -R xorg" and reinstall xorg. I hope this is the last time that such a "not so much understandable story" happens.:) Thanks to everybody for the hints.

Cerebral · 2007-11-29 19:05:04

attila wrote:

Cerebral wrote:
You mean disabling [extra], then running pacman -R xorg doesn't work? Does it still try to remove the group? That's unfortunate - I had hoped group information wasn't stored in the localdb.
What i want to say is that after disabling extra and a "pacman -Sy" (as a recommend by you) a "pacman -R xorg" wants to delete the group instead of the metapackage

Huh - I guess it keeps group information in the localDB. I learn something new every day.

chicha · 2007-11-29 20:33:48

Thank you every body for your answers !

To sum up :

The only clean way to remove the dummy xorg package is to

1- Remove the xorg group (pacman -R xorg)
2- Remove the xorg dummy package (pacman -R xorg)
3- Reinstall the xorg group (pacman -S xorg)

And what about the dirty way : remove the directory /var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1 ?

I did the following search :

[21:26 chicha ~]$ grep -B 1 "^xorg$" /var/lib/pacman/local/*/desc
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-input-keyboard-1.2.2-2/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-input-keyboard-1.2.2-2/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-input-mouse-1.2.3-1/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-input-mouse-1.2.3-1/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-video-vesa-1.3.0-5/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-video-vesa-1.3.0-5/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1/desc-%NAME%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-fonts-75dpi-1.0.1-2/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-fonts-75dpi-1.0.1-2/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-server-1.4-6/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-server-1.4-6/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-xinit-1.0.7-1/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-xinit-1.0.7-1/desc:xorg

All the "xorg" occurrences in those packages are for the %GROUPS% keyword ... but for the package xorg-11R7.0-1

I think I can safely remove the /var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1 directory as long as it did not installed any thing on the system, will not remove anything if it was removed with pacman -R and that no other package refer to it.

The thing is that I am not familiar with pacman's database yet.
My question is : is pacman's database only built with the files under /var/lib/pacman/local/ ? If so I can remove safely the directory from the db for the reasons mentioned above. If not, what are the other files involved in the db ?

Thank you very much for your help !
Cheers

shining · 2007-11-29 21:04:07

chicha wrote:

Thank you every body for your answers !
To sum up :
The only clean way to remove the dummy xorg package is to
1- Remove the xorg group (pacman -R xorg)
2- Remove the xorg dummy package (pacman -R xorg)
3- Reinstall the xorg group (pacman -S xorg)

This is the only current way with pacman.
The clean way would be a new pacman option / flag / whatever.

And what about the dirty way : remove the directory /var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1 ?
I did the following search :
[21:26 chicha ~]$ grep -B 1 "^xorg$" /var/lib/pacman/local/*/desc
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-input-keyboard-1.2.2-2/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-input-keyboard-1.2.2-2/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-input-mouse-1.2.3-1/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-input-mouse-1.2.3-1/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-video-vesa-1.3.0-5/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xf86-video-vesa-1.3.0-5/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1/desc-%NAME%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-fonts-75dpi-1.0.1-2/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-fonts-75dpi-1.0.1-2/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-server-1.4-6/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-server-1.4-6/desc:xorg
--
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-xinit-1.0.7-1/desc-%GROUPS%
/var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-xinit-1.0.7-1/desc:xorg
All the "xorg" occurrences in those packages are for the %GROUPS% keyword ... but for the package xorg-11R7.0-1
I think I can safely remove the /var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1 directory as long as it did not installed any thing on the system, will not remove anything if it was removed with pacman -R and that no other package refer to it.
The thing is that I am not familiar with pacman's database yet.
My question is : is pacman's database only built with the files under /var/lib/pacman/local/ ? If so I can remove safely the directory from the db for the reasons mentioned above. If not, what are the other files involved in the db ?
Thank you very much for your help !
Cheers

To Cerebral : you can indeed see here that the local db has groups information

To chicha : based on everything you said, you can indeed safely remove that directory.
The current database has often been criticized for its inefficiency, but it has at least this advantage of being simple to read and edit manually.

Cerebral · 2007-11-29 21:25:44

shining wrote:

To Cerebral : you can indeed see here that the local db has groups information

Indeed I can. I would have checked my localdb's at home, except I'm at work now - so my posts in this thread were trying to be helpful but obviously flawed due to my lack-of-access to my home PC.

dolby · 2007-11-29 21:26:31

you should NEVER mess with /var/lib/local. let pacman take care of that

all the above imo

Cerebral · 2007-11-29 21:33:10

Yeah, generally if you mess with /var/lib/pacman/local, you're taking the sanity of the database into your own hands. If you screw something up, it's your own fault, and it may result in pacman not knowing which packages you have installed.

Having said that, I have messed with the DB with vi a little bit to serve my own ends. But only work with the localdb this way if you REALLY, REALLY know what you're doing. REALLY. And make backups.

chicha · 2007-11-29 21:51:11

Cerebral wrote:

But only work with the localdb this way if you REALLY, REALLY know what you're doing. REALLY. And make backups.

I will not complain if I broke pacman db. I also have a daily backup of important directories such this one.

I am just trying to understand how things are done. At first I did not liked this DB against a sqlite or berkeley db.
But the more I look at it, the more I find it enought for what we need : I can grep and look around very easily ! And with a problem such the xorg dummy package, it is easier to fix bugs than bothering with table constraints, inner join and other SQL stuffs !

This is so Arch : nothing is hidden. You can understand every thing and cope with any problem

I will keep you informed if the removal fixed the problem without creating a new one
Again, thank you very much for all your help and advices !

Lone_Wolf · 2007-11-30 20:42:14

I had the same issue on my desktop and removing xorg twice then re-installing would be so much work that a reinstall seems easier, so i choose the dirty way also and removed that folder yesterday.

I update this desktop almost daily and will keep an eye on problems.

shining · 2007-11-30 21:01:54

Lone_Wolf wrote:

I had the same issue on my desktop and removing xorg twice then re-installing would be so much work that a reinstall seems easier

What?

chicha · 2007-11-30 21:12:46

chicha wrote:

I will keep you informed if the removal fixed the problem without creating a new one

I choosed the ugly/dirty/nasty or whatever way
It worked like a charm and I do not seem to have any problem since yesterday.
If I ever have a problem related to this I will post it here so that any body who take a look at this post can profit from my mistakes ... if any !

Cheers !

Cerebral · 2007-11-30 21:14:45

If the only directory you remove is /var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1/ then you will have no problems.

chicha · 2007-11-30 21:19:46

Cerebral wrote:

If the only directory you remove is /var/lib/pacman/local/xorg-11R7.0-1/ then you will have no problems.

This is exactly what I did. I also backed up the directory, just in case.
Thank you Cerebral for the confirmation : I feel reassured

Arch Linux

#1 2007-11-28 20:50:21

Howto remove xorg dummy package

#2 2007-11-28 21:43:18

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#3 2007-11-29 08:35:17

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#4 2007-11-29 12:08:42

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#5 2007-11-29 12:51:32

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#6 2007-11-29 13:05:36

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#7 2007-11-29 13:18:31

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#8 2007-11-29 17:13:06

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#9 2007-11-29 17:45:26

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#10 2007-11-29 18:14:33

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#11 2007-11-29 18:23:20

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#12 2007-11-29 18:29:19

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#13 2007-11-29 18:41:57

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#14 2007-11-29 19:05:04

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#15 2007-11-29 20:33:48

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#16 2007-11-29 21:04:07

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#17 2007-11-29 21:25:44

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#18 2007-11-29 21:26:31

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#19 2007-11-29 21:33:10

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#20 2007-11-29 21:51:11

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#21 2007-11-30 20:42:14

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#22 2007-11-30 21:01:54

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#23 2007-11-30 21:12:46

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#24 2007-11-30 21:14:45

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

#25 2007-11-30 21:19:46

Re: Howto remove xorg dummy package

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