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Ulf Klose
Asked: 2011-11-01 03:46:16 +0800 CST

Purge every package with a given string in its name

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What I want do is to purge (via aptitude purge) every package installed with a given string in its name.

E.g. apache2. I've got several packages with the string apache2 in their name installed on a system. Now I want to aptitude purge apache2 (like apache2, apache2.2-bin, libapache2-mod-ruby, etc.). But I do not find a way to do this.

Thanks for your answers in advance.

linux ubuntu debian aptitude

2 Answers

  1. I would parse the output of dpkg --get-selections, doing something along the following.

    $ dpkg --get-selections | cut -f 1 | grep apache | sudo xargs aptitude purge -y

    (For better understanding, feel free to try the pipe out one step at a time.)

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  2. Best Answer

    A quick troll through the Aptitude Reference Manual on patterns I found this entry.

    Working from that, aptitude purge ?name('apache2') will do what you want, but if you're wise you'll run it with -s the first time so you can see what all it'll remove before committing to the task.

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