Removing ubuntu-base?

[Rami Kayyali]

But isn't that more of a hassle? I mean, if I want to remove a couple
of packages then that's fine, but what if I want to remove more
packages? I'm starting to wish Debian had something similar to USE
flags for satisfying dependencies, maybe something like:

USE="-postfix -dhcp3-client" apt-get install ubuntu-base.

Isn't there anything similar?

----
Rami Kayyali


On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 17:58:07 -0500, Stephen Ryan
<taketwoaspirin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 11:53:10 +0200, Rami Kayyali <r.kayyali at gmail.com> wrote:
> > How about if I reinstall ubuntu-base before upgrading? This should
> > make it all work, right?
> >
> > Right now, I'm running Hoary (from Warty), and I removed ubuntu-base,
> > so whenever Hoary is released from beta, I'll probably just reinstall
> > ubuntu-base, upgrade, then remove everything I don't need, what do you
> > think?
> >
> 
> There is a better way; the equivs package lets you generate dummy
> packages for the sole purpose of satisfying dependencies.  Generate
> dummy packages for postfix and dhcp3-client, then you can leave
> ubuntu-base installed without needing to reinstall the real
> dhcp3-client and postfix packages.
> 
> Install equivs; it's available as an Ubuntu package (I did "sudo
> apt-get install equivs").
> 
> Save the following as postfix-dummy.control:
> =====
> Section: mail
> Package: postfix-dummy
> Provides: postfix
> Description: dummy package to allow real Postfix package to be removed
> =====
> 
> Save the following as dhcp3-client-dummy.control
> =====
> Section: net
> Package: dhcp3-client-dummy
> Provides: dhcp3-client
> Description: dummy package to allow real dhcp3-client package to be removed
> =====
> 
> Now open a Terminal window and run:
> $ equivs-build postfix-dummy.control
> $ sudo dpkg -i postfix-dummy_1.0_all.deb
> $ equivs-build dhcp3-client-dummy
> $ sudo dpkg -i dhcp3-client-dummy_1.0_all.deb
> 
> Now you should be able to reinstall ubuntu-base without reinstalling
> the actual postfix and dhcp3-client packages.
> 
> There are example .control files in /usr/share/doc/equivs/examples/
> (after you install it).  The Section: field in each file I copied from
> the corresponding Section: field in the packages you wish to remove.
> The Package: name is arbitrary, picked to be unlikely to conflict with
> a real package name.  The Provides: line is just the name of the
> package(s) you wish to replace, although it is a good idea not to mix
> unrelated packages together (should you ever wish to install the real
> postfix, it would be very confusing to have dhcp3-client pulled in at
> the same time).  The Description: field is just so that you'll
> remember what this is next year when you're looking around and can't
> remember why you did this.
> 
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