[Techtalk] Uninstalling programs in Linux

[David Merrill]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 06:50:45PM -0700, Marian Routh wrote:
> Hi - Here's a Windows-centric question for you:  How do I uninstall a 
> program that I don't want any more?  I'd like to get rid of SOT office, 
> which I didn't install using SuSE's Yast2 updater.  I just d/led the 
> proggie and ran the rpm as root.

If you installed using rpm, you uninstall using rpm also.

> I logged in as root and typed rpm -e /home/me/name-of-rpm-package and  
> the console told me the package was not installed!  Which it is.  So I 
> tried just calling it by its name, SOT_Office.  Same response.  I 
> looked in SOT's readme, and there's nothing about how to remove it (I 
> guess they couldn't conceive of that).

It must have some other name. Try typing 'rpm -qa' to get a list of
everything you have installed, and look for it. Some other tricks to
find it:

	rpm -qa | grep foo

will list any programs containing 'foo' anywhere in the package name

	rpm -qa | less

will load the list in the 'less' program, so you can page up and down
through it. You can also type the '/' key, 'foo', and enter to search
for the 'foo' characters.

> Then I tried kpackage and SOT showed up twice.  The first one returned 
> an error of "can't find readme in file index" and several other files.  
> Then it disappeared from the kpackage listing.  So I clicked on the 
> other one, and it tells me SOT isn't installed.  And yet it is still 
> living there in its folder in my home directory, taking up a lot of 
> space.  Help! Help!

Now *that's* weird, and I don't know what's going on. Maybe you have
the rpm plus some other version of it installed somehow? Or perhaps
your rpm database is busted. If that's the case, you can run

	rpm --rebuilddb

to regenerate the database.

Wait a sec. What do you mean it's lying there in your home directory?
How did you install it into your home directory? Is that how it's
designed to work?

BTW, if you can post the rpm file for me to download, I can check it
out and tell you exactly what to do to uninstall it, by installing it
myself on a test system.

HTH (Hope This Helps),

-- 
David C. Merrill                         http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                   david at lupercalia.net
Lead Developer                                 http://www.tldp.org

The fact that there's some e-mail here at MS that says, 'let's go up and
beat this guy'...there's nothing wrong with that. That is capitalism at
work for consumers.
	--Bill Gates on Good Morning America, 11-11-98