[Mageia-dev] Orphans - those poor orphans . . .

Fri Jan 6 16:13:49 CET 2012

On 6 January 2012 15:53, LinuxBSDos.com <finid at linuxbsdos.com> wrote:
+>> This is a well known issue.
+>> To clear out the list you need a deep knowledge of the system to
+>> determine which packages are really not needed anymore.
+>>
+>> Lately  this --auto-orphans line shreddered my whole system on a fresh
+>> install after the first update, several system services could not
+>> start at next reboot, applications did not run, etc. One of the very
+>> few times I had to re-install because of a bug. Call me newbie or
+>> pussy but until this is not a secure function I will never touch it
+>> again.
+>
+> Btw, this problem is not unique to Mageia. After I hosed a Debian
+> installation by running apt with auto-orphans, I vowed never to mess with
+> orphans again.
+>
+> The system has to be intelligent enough to know what is or is not an orphan.
+
+It is.
+orphan packages are packages that were never directly requested/installed;
+they're packages that got installed because they were requested or suggested
+by other packages that were explicitely choosed.
+Then if you remove the package you explicitely choose, urpmi sees that the
+packages that were requested by this one are no more required by anything
+and since you never explicitely requested them, it offer to remove them.
+
+You can explicitely request them by running "urpmi <package>" and it'll never
+be in the orphan list anymore after.
+