How to fix "dnf autoremove" on my system?

[Manuel Reimer]

Hello,

I seem to be one of the users who has a somewhat "corrupted" package 
database.

The system has been only upgraded so far and was initially installed 
with "yum".

If I run "autoremove", then I get the following (long) list where surely 
not everything can be removed.

Can someone please prepare a command for me to mark the "relevant" 
packages as "explicitly installed"?

List: https://pastebin.com/uanFQiAV

Thanks in advance

Manuel

[stan]

On Mon, 23 Dec 2019 18:04:28 +0100
Manuel Reimer  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I seem to be one of the users who has a somewhat "corrupted" package 
> database.
>
> The system has been only upgraded so far and was initially installed 
> with "yum".
>
> If I run "autoremove", then I get the following (long) list where
> surely not everything can be removed.
>
> Can someone please prepare a command for me to mark the "relevant" 
> packages as "explicitly installed"?
>
> List: https://pastebin.com/uanFQiAV

I'm not quite sure what you mean, as I haven't used the command
autoremove.

The way to correct a corrupted rpm database, is to run as sudo or su or
root the command:
rpm --rebuilddb
This tells rpm to look at the installed packages, and rebuild its db
using them.  All package managers use the rpm db, so this should fix any
packages that are installed but missing.

However, if murphy's law strikes and it doesn't, then I have attached a
dnf command that should work by reinstalling all the packages.  It is a
bash script, so it will need exec permissions.

If this still doesn't work, try replacing the reinstall with install in
the script.

[Samuel Sieb]

On 12/23/19 9:04 AM, Manuel Reimer wrote:
> I seem to be one of the users who has a somewhat "corrupted" package 
> database.

Why do you think your package database is corrupted?  If it's because of 
this autoremove issue, then you don't really have a problem.
> The system has been only upgraded so far and was initially installed 
> with "yum".

I think the metadata store is different between yum and dnf, so if you 
initially installed with yum, then dnf won't have all the right info.
> If I run "autoremove", then I get the following (long) list where surely 
> not everything can be removed.

Why are you trying to do this?  There is no easy way to mark the 
necessary packages.  It's a very manual process and somewhat specific to 
the person doing it.  Unless you have a specific concern, it's not worth it.

[Anthony F McInerney]

On Mon, 23 Dec 2019 at 21:53, Samuel Sieb  wrote:
> On 12/23/19 9:04 AM, Manuel Reimer wrote:
> > If I run "autoremove", then I get the following (long) list where surely
> > not everything can be removed.
>
> Why are you trying to do this?  There is no easy way to mark the
> necessary packages.  It's a very manual process and somewhat specific to
> the person doing it.  Unless you have a specific concern, it's not worth
> it.
>
> So out of interest i ran 'dnf grouplist -v' (after checking autoremove)

and notice that I no longer have a group installed.
As i use xfce base i ran 'dnf group install xfce-desktop-environment' .
Didn't really fix my autoremove list much, added 1 to it :)
Anyway, just wondering if this might help with some of the more basic
packages listed - firewalld etc. :/

[Manuel Reimer]

On 23.12.19 22:52, Samuel Sieb wrote:
> Why do you think your package database is corrupted?  If it's because of 
> this autoremove issue, then you don't really have a problem.

What I want to do is to clean up my installed packages. I want to get 
rid of packages that have been left in the past while upgrading between 
releases. Especially packages that have been installed as dependency of 
long gone packages.

That's what I thought "dnf autoremove" could help with.
> I think the metadata store is different between yum and dnf, so if you 
> initially installed with yum, then dnf won't have all the right info.

Doesn't this make the whole idea of replacing yum with dnf a pretty bad 
thing? I thought dnf would start with the last yum database right away 
or they even share the same databases. Isn't yum just a wrapper for dnf 
on current Fedora installations?
> Why are you trying to do this?  There is no easy way to mark the 
> necessary packages.  It's a very manual process and somewhat specific to 
> the person doing it.  Unless you have a specific concern, it's not worth 
> it.

I want to clean up the system. It runs for several years now (without 
major problems) but I want to swap the hard drive with an SSD and remove 
some unused stuff before copying the system to the new drive.

I guess a good start could be to install a fresh Fedora installation in 
a virtual machine and get a list of explicitly installed packages from 
that. If I mark all these as explicitly installed on the other machine, 
I think the "autoremove" list could be way shorter.

Manuel