Baslinux mailing list

["Carl Reaburn" <carlreaburn AT attech.net.au>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Miller" <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>
To: <baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 2:09 PM
Subject: Re: [BL] ipfwadm in BL3


> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Carl Reaburn wrote:
>
> > I know this may be a cardinal sin.
> >
> > I imported the manifest file into excel.  trimmed off the first few 
> > columns.
> > inserted a column of "rm" in front of the file names.  Saved it at space
> > delimited text file.  Copied it to the BL3 machine and ran it!  bye bye 
> > to
> > all the files installed. :)
>
> Sounds like you may have stumbled onto the holy grail of program
> uninstallation under Linux :). How ironic that the solution should come
> from M$! But wait: you could have used OpenOffice's speadsheet program,
> then it would have been a fully open source solution! Shame on you for
> allowing M$ to get the credit for this one, when an open source program
> could have worked just as well /end ideological shaming attempt

I'm sure there is an easier way of doing it.  I just don't know enough linux 
to format the output of pkg into an uninstall script.  So I sinned and used 
the only thing I had handy that could do column edits, a M$ product.

It is worse than that though.  I am running windows XP.  BL3 is running in a 
virtual environment simulated by Virtual PC.  I get files in and out of BL3 
by mounting my windows XP drive. (scary)

On the up side, BL3 has no idea it is running inside a window and tulip.o 
accesses the simulated network card perfectly.  I can even ping the outside 
world.


> > Judging by the discussion over how to uninstall a package I suspect the 
> > pkg
> > command needs an uninstall option added to it.  It should not be too
> > difficult to use the tgz file as a list of  files to remove, rather than
> > add.  The hard part will be knowing if the empty directories were there
> > before the install, and if they should be removed or not.
>
> Steven is open to add-on packages in general. Why not work up a routine
> for doing these uninstalls and submit it to him?

I think someone who doesn't have to ask silly questions like "Where is the 
ipchains command" is probably better suited to writing code.  I do have a 
programming background, but very little experience with linux.  This week 
was my very first kernel change.

I have a vague memory that grep could be used to reformat the output of pkg 
into an uninstall file, but my unit is a bit rusty.  about 20 years rusty!

Carl