Return to the Press page

Serve your customers, not your servers, with VERIO Linux VPS. Full-access test-drive here.

LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 15, 2008

A Talk with Fedora Project Leader Paul Frields

LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 8, 2008

Blizzard tests the reach of copyright law

Weekly edition	Kernel	Security	Distributions	Search
Archives	Calendar	Subscribe	Write for LWN	LWN.net FAQ

Predictions for 2007 (and how I did on 2006) (LinuxWorld)

[Posted December 26, 2006 by ris]

Don Marti takes a look at his predictions for 2006 and makes some new predictions for 2007. ""Platforms get granular for self-defense. Tired of worms that attack software you don't use, but that you need to patch anyway because it's part of the 'platform'? In 2006, you'll get better dependency checking to deploy just what you need, and update services that are smart enough not to bug you about software you don't need to update because you don't have it." Partial hit. The hot distribution was Ubuntu, which borrows its easier to manage approach from Debian. Package management is getting better all the time, but there still aren't enough tools to detect software that isn't being used and encourage new sysadmins to remove it."

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Dec 27, 2006 0:57 UTC (Wed) by garglebutt (guest, #42419) [Link]

apt-get in Ubuntu Edgy Eft adds an 'autoremove' command that removes packages that are only dependents of uninstalled packages. The feature hasn't made it to debian yet.

Predictions for 2007 (and how I did on 2006) (LinuxWorld)

Posted Dec 27, 2006 6:55 UTC (Wed) by static666 (guest, #42421) [Link]

Did you ever try:

apt-cache show deborphan

eh? It has been around for ages AFAIK.

funny

Posted Dec 27, 2006 8:49 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

"Everyone" talks about the better package management of Debian-based distributions compared to rpm-based ones. But essential features like removing no longer needed packages that were only installed as dependencies automatically is something hot and new? SUSE has had this for years now. Never thought about this as something special, just expected this to work.

funny

Posted Dec 27, 2006 9:25 UTC (Wed) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]

While I will quibble with your characterization of the feature as "essential" (essential to what? running a GNU/Linux OS? Hardly that.), Debian's had it for years, too, though. The aptitude package manager has had it at least since February of 2002, so that's nearly 5 years ago. I determined this based on the package changelog, which reports a bug fixed in the feature back then:

aptitude (0.2.9.4-2) unstable; urgency=high  
  
  * Backported a fix from CVS for a nasty interaction when the user  
  tried to follow Suggests and remove unused packages at the same time.  
    This doesn't fix all the issues, but it gets rid of the most  
  immediate problem.  A more complete fix may be hashed out in the future.  
    (Closes: #135956)  
  
 -- Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>  Wed, 27 Feb 2002 09:12:18 
-0500

deborphan, which doesn't impose itself on the user automatically, but does exist and which could have been automated via a cron job or bolted into apt-get's operation via /etc/apt/apt.conf.d, was initially released by Peter Palfrader on 3 June 2000 (so, over 6 and a half years ago).

Are these examples old enough for you? :)

thank you

Posted Dec 27, 2006 10:19 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

Don't look too closely at my choice of words. English is not my native language and my brain still refuses to power up to full strength today (that is: need more coffee...)

But thanks for clarifying. I was really puzzled that the supposedly better package manager would not have that simple feature.

thank you

Posted Dec 27, 2006 19:17 UTC (Wed) by jhs (subscriber, #12429) [Link]

Indeed. And, that SUSE put the feature at all its users' fingertips is commendable.

Predictions for 2007 (and how I did on 2006) (LinuxWorld)

Posted Dec 27, 2006 11:39 UTC (Wed) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

Uninstalling packages that aren't being used seems like a good idea, but it raises the question, why are those packages installed in the first place?

Predictions for 2007 (and how I did on 2006) (LinuxWorld)

Posted Dec 27, 2006 13:44 UTC (Wed) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

If you enter "apt-get install A" where A depends on B that was not installed, then apt-get asks if you wish to install B. Now, if you later execute "apt-get remove A", then only A would be removed. Thus the idea to record those automatically installed packages and have an option to remove them.

Predictions for 2007 (and how I did on 2006) (LinuxWorld)

Posted Dec 27, 2006 13:47 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Dependencies (as parent said). Example: you install scribus. That pulls in qt (and other stuff) as a dependency. You don't like scribus, and remove it. But this does not remove qt. apt-get autoremove will recognise that you didn't ask to install qt, you only got it as a dependency, and will remove it (unless, in the meantime, you installed something else that depends on qt).

Missing the point in package removal

Posted Dec 27, 2006 16:50 UTC (Wed) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link]

Surely many of the earlier posts are missing the point of the original article. What is needed is a mechanism to detect which packages *you don't use*, not those which are orphaned. So your distro may include Firefox, IceWeasel, Konqueror and Lynx, but you may only ever use one. Not to mention all the other applications and utilities that you have never even heard of. By removing the superfluous ones, there's no need to patch them.

Of course, to be really valuable, such a clean-up utility should be looking at the last-access times, and also have some smarts built in, so it can let you choose which you don't want. And also which would be a really bad idea to get rid of (hey, I never run fsck, I'll delete it!)

Missing the point in package removal

Posted Dec 27, 2006 20:57 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Considering that all previous posters concentrate on the prediction highlighted by LWN and ignore some more interesting predictions, such as net neutrality, it would be pretty safe to conclude that they didn't read the article at all.

Looking back (which is admittedly easier than looking forward), it's quite unreasonable to predict a major change in the way how distributions are organized one year from now unless there is an already an active effort in that direction.

A way to suggest unused packages to remove

Posted Jan 3, 2007 5:06 UTC (Wed) by midg3t (subscriber, #30998) [Link]

You could build a tool to give you that information based on Debian's popularity-contest package, and the existing package priorities. Use the popularity-contest log file to determine which packages were not used, and suggest removal of all those with priority "optional" and "extra".

A way to suggest unused packages to remove

Posted Jan 3, 2007 5:36 UTC (Wed) by midg3t (subscriber, #30998) [Link]

Here's the really quick version:

grep '<OLD>' /var/log/popularity-contest | grep -v ' lib' | cut -d' ' -f3

Adjust to your desire.