Removing and Updating Packages
| There is no front end in Sysinstall for removing packages. You really don't need one because once a package is installed, you can specify its name directly using the commandline package management tools. You can use pkg_info to see which packages you have installed, as you learned earlier. You can also simply look in /var/db/pkg; the directory names in there are the same as the package names. After you have the name of the package you want to delete, simply use pkg_delete to remove it, like this: # pkg_delete pine-4.60If the package has any dependencies, pkg_delete will detect them and refuse to proceed unless you've run it with the -f option to force deinstallation. It will also attempt to run any deinstallation scripts and evaluate any "require" statements; if these fail, pkg_delete will also fail (except if it's running with the -f option). As with pkg_add, you can use a number of other options, including verbose mode (-v) and "dry run" mode (-n). Upgrading Installed PackagesIf you attempt to install a newer version of an already installed package, pkg_add will exit with the following error message: # pkg_add pine-4.63.tbz pkg_add: package 'pine-4.63' or its older version already installedThis means you need to delete the package in question before attempting to install a newer version. First remove the package using pkg_delete (as described previously), and then use pkg_add to install the latest version of the package, either from a downloaded tarball or using the -r option to automatically fetch the most recent package version. |
