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Review unused packages and safely remove from Ubuntu 20

Posted December 10, 2021 140 views
Ubuntu 20.04

Hello,

I am newish to server management and have noticed ‘autoremove’ notices when updating packages using the command line. I have run 'sudo apt autoremove’ once or twice, but have noticed that some packages that are still needed have been removed. I usually notice this when something breaks in a WordPress or Joomla site that I manage. When this happens, I just re-install the package and everything seems to be good.

I am sure there is a better way to review all installed packages (sudo apt list –installed) and safely remove those that are outdated and are absolutely not needed anymore.

Any help or tips are greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

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mikehermary
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mikehermary

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1 answer
KFSys December 10, 2021

Hi @mikehermary,

The packages that are outdated can be resolved by running the commands:

$ apt update
$ apt upgrade

Once this has run, all you need to do is as said execute the command:

$ apt autoremove

Here is what I received when I did this:

$ apt autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED: grub-pc-bin libdumbnet1 libpython-stdlib libpython2.7-minimal libpython2.7-stdlib python python-minimal python-pyicu python2.7 python2.7-minimal python3-lib2to3
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 11 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 21.7 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
(Reading database ... 127785 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing grub-pc-bin (2.02-2ubuntu8.23) ...
Removing libdumbnet1:amd64 (1.12-7build1) ...
Removing python-pyicu (1.9.8-0ubuntu1) ...
Removing python (2.7.15~rc1-1) ...
Removing libpython-stdlib:amd64 (2.7.15~rc1-1) ... 
Removing python2.7 (2.7.17-1~18.04ubuntu1.6) ...
Removing libpython2.7-stdlib:amd64 (2.7.17-1~18.04ubuntu1.6) ...
Removing python-minimal (2.7.15~rc1-1) ...
Removing python2.7-minimal (2.7.17-1~18.04ubuntu1.6) ...
Unlinking and removing bytecode for runtime python2.7 
Removing libpython2.7-minimal:amd64 (2.7.17-1~18.04ubuntu1.6) ...
Removing python3-lib2to3 (3.6.9-1~18.04) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.27-3ubuntu1.4) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2ubuntu0.1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.60ubuntu1) ...

Then when I run $ apt upgrade here is what I see:

$ apt upgrade
Reading package lists... Done 
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done 
Calculating upgrade... Done
 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
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