Mageia forum

29/3/14 - I used the code below to remove orphan files from Mageia 4
which was an upgrade of Mag 3 which was an upgrade of Mag2:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh           
filename="orphans.txt"
while read line           
do           
    yum remove -y $line   # y is pre-emptive yes       
done <$filename
rpmorphan

# run rpmorphan > /home/tomato/Desktop/orphans.txt
# then this file as su - this file is in bin folder
# 29/3/14 had to run it 6 times to remove all orphans

Above constitutes the file, including the comments which were for reminding myself in future.
There might be some recursive way to avoid the 6 time repeat, but it was good enough for me on this occasion.

Why use yum? Mageia package manager is urpm.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/URPMI

IMHO the best way to manage orphans is to use qt4urpm:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Removing_packages

Jim

30/3/14 - the script I included in my post of yesterday, where I said I had to run it 6 times, wiped out the Mageia Control Centre.
So after a lot of all-over-the-place searching I came accross:
http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/s ... y=drakconf
from where I downloaded:
drakconf-12.51-1.mga4.noarch.rpm
which run by: urpmi drakconf-12.51-1.mga4.noarch.rpm
restore the MCC, and my OS is still clear of orphans.

What's actually the point of this thread, if you don't even respond to suggestions and don't reply to questions?

FWIW, on my mga4 system, rpmorphan reports a list of "orphans". These are all packages that I want to keep and so have previously used urpmi to mark them as not orphans. As a result, urpmi does not report them as orphans. As the OP has discovered, removing all packages that rpmorphan reports as orphans has the same risks as using "urpme --auto-orphans" and so is not recommended.

Jim

Quick question, if I may jump in here...

I've noticed too that the package manager brings up a list of orphaned packages whenever I update the system or install a new package. Why are orphaned packages such a big deal that users have to be reminded about them so often? Other than taking up a bit of hard disk space, which is fairly insignificant on modern systems, I don't see any problems orphans might cause. On the other hand, as is pointed out in various threads around this forum, removing orphans willy-nilly isn't without risks.

So, wouldn't it be better for the package manager to just keep quiet about the orphans? Or am I missing something? Why is Mageia's package manager doing this? I don't remember seeing this in other distros.

Please see https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Removing_packages and the previous threads about orphans for more information on your questions.
Also have a look at e.g. https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=920

Thanks, doktor5000, interesting reading, particularly the bug report.