8.2.5. Removing Packages
Similarly to package installation, Yum allows you to uninstall (remove in RPM and Yum terminology) both individual packages and a package group.
Removing Individual Packages
To uninstall a particular package, as well as any packages that depend on it, run the following command as
root:
yumremovepackage_name
As when you install multiple packages, you can remove several at once by adding more package names to the command. For example, to remove totem, rhythmbox, and sound-juicer, type the following at a shell prompt:
~]# yum remove totem rhythmbox sound-juicer
Similar to
install, remove can take these arguments:
- package names
- glob expressions
- file lists
- package provides
Warning
Yum is not able to remove a package without also removing packages which depend on it. This type of operation can only be performed by RPM, is not advised, and can potentially leave your system in a non-functioning state or cause applications to misbehave and/or crash. For further information, see Section B.2.4, “Uninstalling” in the RPM chapter.
Removing a Package Group
You can remove a package group using syntax congruent with the
install syntax:
yumgroupremovegroup
yumremove@group
The following are alternative but equivalent ways of removing the
KDE Desktop group:
~]#yum groupremove "KDE Desktop"~]#yum groupremove kde-desktop~]#yum remove @kde-desktop
Important
When you tell yum to remove a package group, it will remove every package in that group, even if those packages are members of other package groups or dependencies of other installed packages. However, you can instruct
yum to remove only those packages which are not required by any other packages or groups by adding the groupremove_leaf_only=1 directive to the [main] section of the /etc/yum.conf configuration file. For more information on this directive, see Section 8.4.1, “Setting [main] Options”.
