On 15 January 2015 at 21:04, Adam Conrad <adcon...@ubuntu.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 10:49:42AM -0600, Dustin Kirkland wrote: >> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Adam Conrad <adcon...@ubuntu.com> wrote: >> >> > I can see several ways "power users" can shoot themselves in the foot >> > with autoremove, but no way that "normal people" can, and I'm not sure >> > catering to people who think they're clever doing unclever things is >> > the right default. >> >> Autoremoving kernels, when you have lots of them, and as long as you >> keep your current one (and one other known good one), should be very >> safe, for almost any user. > > Right, kernel autoremoval is always safe. Where people can shoot > themselves in the foot (assuming automatic autoremove) is the following > sort of scenario: > > 1) Corporate IT dept distributes end-user bundle of apps by way of a > private repo consisting of all apps, and a company-meta package that > depends on them. > > 2) The company-meta package isn't in the "metapackages" section (which > apt treats specially). > > 3) User (with root, so already a small subset) removes "company-meta" > > 4) On the next autoremove, all the company apps are removed. > > This scenario is a non-issue for the Ubuntu archive, we treat our meta > packages correctly, and install things in a way that removing the meta > should do no harm. > > Ultimately, I think optimising for the fear of autoremove causing harm > is the wrong thing at this point, and we're better off doing the cruft > removal. This isn't just about kernels (though, they're the huge thing > people notice), but also old libraries you no longer need, etc.
Can auto-remove accept a pattern of things to remove? E.g. apt autoremove linux-* Imho: dist-upgrader should remove old kernels during clean-up stage (it does a few cleanup tasks already) update-manager should actually invoke autoremove linux-* when things fail due to out-of-disk space on /boot, at the moment it pops up a dialog with suggestion to run autoremove. if automatic updates are enabled(apt upgrade, not full-upgrade) it should be safe to run autoremove linux-* as well. Or just give better instructions that one should enable autoremove as well. (periodic apt supports it). -- Regards, Dimitri. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
