uninstall

[Tom Mitchell]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2004 at 06:21:19PM -0600, David Eduardo Gómez Noguera wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-01-26 at 18:13, Austin Isler wrote:
> > If I installed something from source, how can I go about uninstalling it 
> > and all the items that came with.
> 
> thats why people came up with package managers.
> So in short, it depends on how you installed it and if it has some way
> to easily uninstall it
> 
> it is likely that if you did an installation with "make install", you
> can uninstall it with "make uninstall", but it is not 100% sure that
> this process will not delete something that you wouldnt want deleted
> (though it is not very likely).
> 
> The other way is to manually delete each installed file, but you should
> have had track of the files that it installed. So thats why installing
> from source is not generally recomended.
> 
> If i wasnt sure i would get into trouble from running "make uninstall",
> and i didnt need the space, I would leave it be.

As an almost last resort make a file with the current time stamp
(touch /tmp/now) and then rebuild and reinstall.  Then a find / -newer
/tmp/now can help you locate things that the install process
generates.  It may be more important to check for "uninstall" in the
make file than another target.  When removing packages it can be
valuable to rename files in preparation removing them.  

This might be a useful trick when you are playing with 'strange' code
the first time.  This trick can help you find generated config files
that were not installed but generated when the process first runs.

	mv /usr/here/someplace/fooo.so /usr/here/someplace/fooo.so.RemoveLater

There is always a chance that the package replaced a key function lib
or tool that you may need.  Too often a pre beta package adds functions
to a standard library (should not but it happens).  Removal could
impact system stability so a staged approach might give you a recovery
path.

Summary: It depends on the package.


-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	mitch48-at-sbcglobal-dot-net