Question

Review unused packages and safely remove from Ubuntu 20

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there is a better way to review all installed packages (sudo apt list --installed) and safely remove those that are outdated and are absolutely not needed anymore.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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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The packages that are outdated can be resolved by running the commands: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.