Removing some of kde before upgrading to new version.

**Durand Hicks** · 05-07-2004, 05:31 AM

Hi,

I'm at a point where an upgrade is in order. Here's the thing, a while back I ran apt-get install kde which loaded an additional 100MB of files onto my installation. Now I see that kde is at 3.2.1 for testing and 3.2.2 for unstable, but what I wanted to do is remove all of kde and then reinstall 3.2.1 or 3.2.2 with just the kde-base or kde-core instead of the entire kde metapackage. Even better would be some way of removing some of kde components down to kde-base size. How does one tailor apt-get in such a way as to remove only certain components but keep others even though they may depend on the components being removed? For instance, if I apt-get remove kdelibs4, it will remove all of kde plus guarddog, arts, kdm, etc, but I want to keep kdm, guarddog, and remove everything else before reinstalling kde-base again.

**Durand Hicks** · 05-08-2004, 09:45 PM

Nevermind,

Found my old baseline file and used that to create a diff file, and then sorted and purged the unwanted kde apps that didn't come with knoppix.

**majiren** · 05-23-2004, 10:05 AM

what baseline - diff,
could you give me some details

thanks

**Durand Hicks** · 05-23-2004, 08:01 PM

If you search the forum for my earlier posts, there is one which I explained how I baseline my system before adding/removing/upgrading software. The command I use is

Code:

dpkg --get-selections > todaysdate.txt

I keep them so I can revert my system to a particular date when I didn't have the additional software that were added/removed since then. Then I take the first file and then take the last file, for example: lastmonth.txt and todaysdate.txt, then I open a console as root and type

Code:

diff lastmonth.txt todaysdate.txt > packages.diff

and it will add plusses to packages that weren't in lastmonth.txt, or add minuses to packages that were in lastmonth.txt but not todaysdate.txt and output the whole thing to packages.diff. Then I edit the diff file and delete all packages that don't have a plus next to it, then remove the plusses and finally rename the file to kicklist. Then I run the command:

Code:

 apt-get remove --purge `cat kicklist`

Viola! all the packages that were installed since lastmonths.txt would be gone and purged and the system is pretty much back to lastmonth's state with upgraded packages. Nice, no?