How can I remove Orphan Packages in Fedora?

Question

I just switched from Ubuntu to Fedora14. In Ubuntu we had the apt-get autoremove thing to remove orphan/unused packages. What is the counterpart in Fedora?

Answer 1

DNF, the yum replacement since Fedora 22, also provides a autoremove subcommand which is modeled after apt-get/yum autoremove.

Examples:

# dnf autoremove

which tries to remove all automatically installed and otherwise unused dependency packages - should be pretty much equivalent to apt-get autoremove.

# dnf autoremove examplepackage

which removes examplepackage and all its automatically installed (and otherwise unused) dependencies.

Yum

Yum has the autoremove command since Fedora 19, and it is documented since Fedora 20/RHEL 7.

The usage is analogous to the dnf implementation, e.g.:

# yum autoremove

or

# yum autoremove examplepackage

Change the behavior of yum removes

Yum supports a config option to change the default behavior of the remove subcommand (e.g. via /etc/yum.conf):

clean_requirements_on_remove=yes

yum.conf(5)

When this is set, the next yum remove also tries to remove auto installed dependencies iff they are not needed by other packages.

You can also temporarily test this option via something like:

# yum --setopt=clean_requirements_on_remove=1 remove examplepackage

Workaround for old Fedora version

(For Fedora versions where the yum autoremove subcommand is not available and/or clean_requirements_on_remove does not work.)

Although during installation of packages installed dependencies are marked as such (seems to be relatively new feature of rpm/yum).

You can find unneeded dependencies via:

$ package-cleanup --leaves -q --all \
    | xargs repoquery --installed --qf '%{nvra} - %{yumdb_info.reason}' \
    | grep -- '- dep' \
    | cut -d' ' -f1 > tmp

This command line is inspired by fenris02's script.

After inspection of tmp (and perhaps curation) you could remove them via something like this:

# xargs yum remove < tmp

Answer 2

package-cleanup --quiet --leaves from the yum-utils package will list the library packages which aren't relied upon by other packages. Unfortunately it tends to be a bit overeager. On my system, for example, it suggested removing libvirt. Adding the --exclude-bin argument helps. If you're happy with it's suggestion, then to clean up the packages, do:

# package-cleanup --quiet --leaves --exclude-bin | xargs yum remove -y

Answer 3

you need to install the yum plugin "remove-with-leaves":

# yum install yum-plugin-remove-with-leaves.noarch

once installed:

# yum remove --remove-leaves package

good luck!

Answer 4

# package-cleanup --orphans >/tmp/junk

edit the /tmp/junk file and remove the first line which is informational from the command line enter the following:

for file in `cat /tmp/junk`
do
  yum remove $file
done

Answer 5

NOTE: This answer is correct but only applies to RHEL 7+ and Fedora 20+ (where autoremove has been added as a new feature).

# yum autoremove

Just confirm to remove the selected packages.

Answer 6

With dnf you can now use for orphans (packages that are not in repositories):

dnf repoquery --extras

and for leaves (unused libraries):

dnf repoquery --unneeded

Answer 7

Building upon Larry Mohr's answer:

package-cleanup --orphans | sed '1d' | sed '/^ * /d' | sed '/Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile/d' | xargs sudo yum remove

(Includes skipping for fastest mirror, if you wonder.)

Answer 8

In Fedora, the orphan package means no candidate repos for it to update!

1. If the orphan packages were generated by you disable yum.repos.d/some.conf.

   yum distro-sync
   

2. Other orphan packages, the command may be dangerous.

   yum remove $(package-cleanup --orphans)
   

   or, just use the safety command.

   yum remove name-of-page
   

Answer 9

Another way to not cause these issues is to to use transactions.

After setup base system, as you install using yum, it creates transactions. When you intend to remove things, rollback the transactions.

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/24/html/System_Administrators_Guide/sec-DNF-Transaction_History.html

Answer 10

yum -y remove $(package-cleanup --orphans | sed -n '/*/,//p' | grep -v \*)