uninstalling programs

[hictio]

how do you uninstall programs in linux? -without having rpm installed-, as i said in earlier postings, i´m running linux on a very old and small machine, and i would like to free some hd space deleting editors, i have three of them, how should i procedure, is it enough to delete the directory that contains a particular editor?

[mikek147]

You can do exactly what you say. However, be very careful on the directories you delete. Make doubly sure that the directory doesn't contain something that is needed by other applications. To cut disk usage, keep /tmp empty. Look for utmp, btmp and wtmp files and keep them to a resonable size, if they are not currently managed. If you have other languages loaded, you can delete the language support you're not using. Just some added thoughts. -mk

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If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.

[hictio]

thanks a lot mike onefourseven. /tmp is nice, clean and empty, but i´ve never heard of the other files that you mention, u-w-btmp, i´ll look for them and see if they´re fat.
thanks again

[mikek147]

You might look for them in /var/log. And you might not find a utmp. They hold user and accounting information.

I would consider getting a larger disk though. Unless you're just using it as a router or a small firewall, you'll always be plagued with disk space problems. Early on I was saddled with an HP system with only a single 305mbyte disk on a production system. Never again. -mk

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If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.

[hictio]

well, thanks again mike. i know i should get a bigger hd, but is´t sort of a n experiment. i got all the package for free, and , correct me if i´m wrong, i believe this a hell of a good way of actually ´learning´ linux, not just installing the latest distro and using kde all the time.
besides, like i said, i got the whoe (!!) computer/monitor 486, 33 mhz, 100 bm, color monitor fro free.
anyways, thanks for your time, have a better one.

[mikek147]

Good luck. -mk

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If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.

[hictio]

thanks for everyhting mike

-=0=-
Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads
without improvement are roads of genius.

William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

[hictio]

mike, once again, thanks for all the tips, i did remove all the other languages, and also i got rid of foreign time zones.
i´ve found the wtmp, utmp and btmp files, how do i ´keep them to a resonable size´, do i strip them down with a text editor, or i simply delete them?

[mikek147]

No, don't delete them. The deletion of the file can break any logging that might be going on.To zero them out, the command:

cat /dev/null >/var/log/wtmp

is one way to handle this issue. This will clear the file without removing it. On my Linux distro, daily backups of most log files are done, keeping a history of 7 days. The control of this is done in /etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.weekly and /etc/cron.monthly. In each one of these directories, you'll find small scripts that deal with this log rotation, using the command savelog command. The '-c 7' part of the command defines how many copies are kept. If you are using this function, you could possibly play with this figure.

If you don't have multiple copies of log files in /var/log, you can create simple scripts to zero them out, using the example above, on a timed basis using crontab.

Another way to handle it is with the following command example:

savelog -g adm -u root -c 1 /var/log/syslog >/dev/null

-mk


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If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.

[hictio]

wow, mike, there is no way on earth to say thank you enough times... the scripts that you posted, empty the contents of a file by just sendidng the output to a null device, only in linux..., it is amazing, every day is full of wonders, thank you very very much.