> On Wed, 2020-05-06 at 10:26 -0500, Robert G (Doc) Savage via CentOS > wrote: >> On Tue, 2020-05-05 at 19:25 -0500, Robert G (Doc) Savage via CentOS >> wrote: >> > I'm about ready to run "dnf erase *mate*" and try re-installing >> > MATE >> > from scratch from the GNOME3 desktop. Is that possible without >> > ripping >> > the heart out of C8 by deleting other critical packages? >> >> I've attached a capture of "dnf erase *mate*" that shows the 104 >> packages that would be removed. It looks safe enough, but if there's >> a >> a better way to fix the problem I'd rather try that. > > Having gotten no responses, I'm about ready to plunge ahead and try > removing MATE v1.22 with dnf, then do a fresh reinstall of all > packages. However, I'm unsure about the safest way to proceed. > > If you look at the listing attached to my last message, you'll see > three different groups of packages: > > Removing: > xxx > Removing dependent packages: > xxx > Removing unused dependencies: > xxx > > I don't understand the meaning of the last group of "unused > dependencies". > > Is there a manual, more surgical way to remove packages that won't rip > the overall CentOS 8.1 installation apart? For example, is there a way > (perhaps a for loop) that deletes only the first two package groups? > All of those are from the COPR repository. Removing them should cause > no problems. But the third group (unused) includes several @AppStream, > @epel, and even one @PowerTools package. > > Any dnf gurus please weigh in here. I'm not sure why dnf is eager to remove more than what you want. I think it's an option you can use to make it remove only what is required, and unused packages are not touched. However, in such cases, what I did is: - check the yum/dnf log for which packages were installed by the time I installed something with lot of dependencies. Make a list of all RPMs. - use plain 'rpm -e --test <list>' and see what it does. - if okay remove '--test' and remove the RPMs. Regards, Simon