On Tue 25 Jul 2017 at 16:16:44 (+0200), Dejan Jocic wrote: > On 25-07-17, Greg Wooledge wrote: > > Is there any way to permanently neuter apt-get autoremove, so that even > > if something invokes it against my will, it will *never* remove anything? > > > > And more, is there a way to get apt and apt-get to *stop* prompting me > > to run it, and *stop* spamming me with a list of packages that it would > > like me to remove? (Maybe that's the same as the first question, maybe > > not.) > > > > My strategy so far has been "ignore the spam, and never willingly run > > autoremove". This mostly works, but I recently learned that tasksel > > will apparently run an autoremove, without warning, whether I want it > > to or not (<http://bugs.debian.org/868892>). > > > > If autoremove will also remove *kernels*, which this thread seems to > > indicate is the case, then my concerns just went up another notch. > > > > I suppose one could manually mark each and every single installed > > package as "manually installed", but you'd have to remember to repeat > > this periodically, and it seems clumsy and inelegant compared to some > > sort of master switch that can just tell autoremove to go die in a fire. > > > > Your fear from autoremove is silly. It
Please note that "it" is "they", viz: apt and apt-get, … > will not remove anything you > really need and, if you stick to default settings, … and that they have different defaults. What's more, apt's behaviour may change between versions, so unqualified statements like this should really be confirmed before being relied on. > will keep all > packages it replaced in /var/cache/apt/archives, as far as I know. And > if you have some package that you really, really want to keep, you can > always pin it, or put it on hold with apt-mark. It is not spam, it is > keeping your system clean. Cheers, David.
