A typical Linux system has hundreds of installed packages, most of which were installed as part of the distribution install process.
Because there are so many, it is difficult to simple browse through them to find one that you want to remove or view the details of. To find a package or packages, follow these steps:
- Login to webmin with root credentials
- Once logged in, click on the webmin tab
- Click on "System" drop down menu
- Click on "Software Packages" in the drop down
- On the main page of the module, enter a search keyword into the Search For Package field. This will be matched against the names and descriptions of all packages, so you can enter something like "php" to find all that are related to PHP.
- Click the Search For Package button, which will either display a list of all matching packages, take you to the details of the package if exactly one is found, or show an error message if none were found. If a list appears, click on one of the package names to see its full details.
- The package details page (shown below) will display all available information, including a full description. If you want to see all the files that it contains, click the List Files button. This will take you to a page showing the path, type, owner and group and validation status for each file. The status is particularly useful, as it allows you to see if a file has been changed manually since the package was installed.
Packages can also be browsed manually by clicking on the Package Tree button on the main page. On most operating systems, each package is a member of a class such as Development or Administration/Networking and for other their are grouped in alphabetical range. The package tree page uses this class information to display all installed packages in a hierarchy, much like a directory tree.
You can open classes by clicking on their folder icons until you get to the package level. Clicking on a package icon will take you to the same details page as described in the steps above.
If you know the name of a command or file and want to find the package that it belongs to, the Identify a File form on the main page can be used. Enter either a full path like /etc/httpd or a command like apachectl into the Search For field, and hit the button. If the file or command is known to the package system, information on it will be displayed along with a list of packages that it belongs to. Clicking on one of the package names will take you to the information page described above.
Once a package has been found by searching or browsing the tree, you can delete it from your system by following these steps:
- On the package details page, click the Uninstall button. This will take you to a confirmation page showing the number of files in the package and the amount of disk space that they occupy.
- If using the RPM packaging system, the Ignore dependencies? option can be set to Yes to force an uninstall even if some other packages depend upon this one being removed.
- Click the Delete button to remove the package. If something goes wrong, an error message will be displayed. If successful, the browser will return to the module’s main page or to the package search results list if you found the package using a search.