linux.gentoo.user

On Wednesday 13 February 2008, Sergey Kobzar wrote:
> Hi
>
> 'emerge -pv --depclean' shows that these packages may be unmerged:

> app-crypt/hashalot
> sys-libs/pwdb
> sys-apps/attr
>
> Is it safe to remove they from the system? This is mail server and
> has mostly no additional packages except exim, mysql, spamassassin
> and some other.

This means that you never explicitly merged them, they are not in world
and are no longer required by anything else. There are normally three
reasons:

- you merged something that needed these packages, then unmerged them
later, leaving these dependencies orphaned
- you merged something else that used them, and in a recent update they
are now using something else that provides the same functionality
- they were required by some USE flag you once had, and you have now
changed your USE, so the deps are no longer required.

You'll need to look at each package and figure out if YOU need them, as
we can't tell you that. I might think that you don't need your wife
under any circumstances, and you might strongly disagree :-)

I once knew what hashalot does. I forgot. It's something to do with
cryptography
pwdb is used as a password and user account configuration thingy. Looks
pretty important :-)
attr provides extended attributes to ext2/3 and XFS file systems, used
by selinux and posix capabilities. If you use these features, you
already are aware of it.

When you figure out which ones to keep, it's best to put them in your
world file. Either edit /var/lib/portage/world and stick the name at
the end, or run 'emerge -n '

--
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

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