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Chad--24216
Asked: 2011-09-05 11:52:30 +0800 CST

How do I uninstall all instances of Java and blacklist it from being installed again?

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For security reasons I want to remove/uninstall all instances of Java from my computer and prevent it from being installed again. On Windows computers I would simply just not install the software found at this webpage: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

But on Ubuntu I've noticed that Java seems to have gotten installed on my system without my explicitly doing it and it shows in several ways, e.g., through plugins, etc.

What Java software on ubuntu is the equivalent of having installed the software at http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp on Windows? Will uninstalling one "Java-named app" uninstall everything Java related on my computer?

How do I blacklist Java so that it isn't installed again?

java

1 Answers

  1. Fistly, I also think totally banning Java is a bit paranoid :)

    Secondly, you can achieve what you want by removing Java packages from the system - this will also un-install all the programs which depend on it. Something like

    sudo apt-get remove java-common

    then you'll need to make it non-installable, so it won't ever be installed as a dependency of another program (which will make the packages which depend on it non-inslallable too). My google-fu says that you can achieve this by editing /etc/apt/preferences and adding something like

    Package: java-common
Pin: release a=fakerepo
Pin-Priority: 1001

    The "fakerepo" thing makes apt to look for the package in a wrong place which prevents its installation. For more details see http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Debian/2009-07/msg00479.html

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