On 27-07-17, David Wright wrote: > On Tue 25 Jul 2017 at 16:16:44 (+0200), Dejan Jocic wrote: > > On 25-07-17, Greg Wooledge wrote: > > > Is there any way to permanently neuter apt-get autoremove, so that even > > > if something invokes it against my will, it will *never* remove anything? > > > > > > And more, is there a way to get apt and apt-get to *stop* prompting me > > > to run it, and *stop* spamming me with a list of packages that it would > > > like me to remove? (Maybe that's the same as the first question, maybe > > > not.) > > > > > > My strategy so far has been "ignore the spam, and never willingly run > > > autoremove". This mostly works, but I recently learned that tasksel > > > will apparently run an autoremove, without warning, whether I want it > > > to or not (<http://bugs.debian.org/868892>). > > > > > > If autoremove will also remove *kernels*, which this thread seems to > > > indicate is the case, then my concerns just went up another notch. > > > > > > I suppose one could manually mark each and every single installed > > > package as "manually installed", but you'd have to remember to repeat > > > this periodically, and it seems clumsy and inelegant compared to some > > > sort of master switch that can just tell autoremove to go die in a fire. > > > > > > > Your fear from autoremove is silly. It > > Please note that "it" is "they", viz: apt and apt-get, … >
Sure it is they. Did any of those they ever removed something that you needed with autoremove? Or they always remove just things that you do not need any more, packages that are just sitting there doing nothing, former dependencies that are not needed for anything? > > will not remove anything you > > really need and, if you stick to default settings, > > … and that they have different defaults. What's more, apt's behaviour > may change between versions, so unqualified statements like this > should really be confirmed before being relied on. > So, same question as above, did and of those they messed up? Are there opened bugs that autoremove from any of used tools in debian removes packages it should not? And qualifications for that statement are years of use of both apt-get and aptitude with autoremove following update/upgrade. Never had any trouble with it. > > will keep all > > packages it replaced in /var/cache/apt/archives, as far as I know. And > > if you have some package that you really, really want to keep, you can > > always pin it, or put it on hold with apt-mark. It is not spam, it is > > keeping your system clean. > > Cheers, > David. > All best, Dejan
