Computer janitor removes manually installed packages

[James Hogarth]

Binary package hint: computer-janitor

In the current (as of today) Jaunty updates computer janitor lists for removal manually installed packages.

As an example apt-get autoremove currently lists only libdvdread3 as no longer required....

Computer janitor lists:

removable deb:ibm-lotus-notes
removable deb:ibm-lotus-sametime
removable deb:libdns43
removable deb:libdvdcss2
removable deb:libdvdread3
removable deb:libgmime2.2-cil
removable deb:libisc44
removable deb:libntfs-3g48
removable deb:linux-headers-2.6.28-7
removable deb:linux-headers-2.6.28-7-generic
removable deb:linux-image-2.6.28-6-generic
removable deb:linux-image-2.6.28-7-generic
removable deb:linux-restricted-modules-2.6.28-6-generic
removable deb:linux-restricted-modules-2.6.28-7-generic
removable deb:mysql-workbench-oss
removable deb:truecrypt

Now although the gui allows for unticks a novice user likely to be using the gui is unlikely to know what is safe to remove and what isn't after installing items from gdebi - or following the restricted formats guild for decss (or receiving a pre built system with decss already on it) - as a simple example.

Manually installed items need to be differentiated from those auto installed for dependencies with the dependencies now removed to prevent unexpected behavior for users in removing 'non-cruft' packages in active use installed via gdebi.

[James Hogarth (james-hogarth)]

Hmm... also looking at my /boot directory I current have vmlinuz-2.6.28-8-generic as my current kernel with -7 and -6 still in there...

Is it sensible to have it remove all but current kernel in the case of a kernel rollback possibly being needed?

Wasn't the ubuntu depends changed for the kernel in Intrepid to keep kernel+1 .... or am I mis-remembering?

Could gdebi/dpkg be modified as a link to this to pop a <packagename>.whitelist in /etc/computer-janitor.d when manually installing something? This won't help systems being upgraded from intrepid... but might help in future.

[Åskar (olskar)]

I can confirm this