Hello, Thanks for your help and time. I really appreciate it.
> Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2021 at 2:51 AM > From: "Greg Wooledge" <g...@wooledge.org> > To: debian-user@lists.debian.org > Subject: Re: How do I permanently disable unattended downloads of > software/security updates? > > > Question: What do you mean by "a metapackage is not critically important"? > > Would you like to elaborate please? > > Take a look at "apt show gnome", for example. > > On bullseye, on my platform, the package "gnome" (which is a metapackage) > has an Installed-Size of 35.8 kB. It doesn't contain any software. All > it really contains are Depends: and Recommends: and Suggests: lines. If > you install this package, it will bring in a whole bunch of new packages > (unless you already installed GNOME, in which case it may do nothing). > > Once all of those packages are installed, you can go ahead and remove > the package named "gnome". It doesn't do anything. It's just a metapackage. Thank you for explaining why a metapackage is not critically important. I'm a bit wiser now :) > Well... OK, I'll tell you how I did it. It's easily reversible, so it > won't hurt you. > > I did it by creating the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99local with the > following content (one line): > > APT::NeverAutoRemove "."; > > What this configuration file does is define a regular expression that > matches every package, and then tells apt never to autoremove any package > that matches that regular expression. > > If you want to go back to normal, simply remove that file. Thank you very much for your example. Best wishes.
