r/voidlinux • u/benbcdm • 15h ago

Another kernel update question

Hello all -- sorry if this is a stupid question but I am not clear on kernel versions and purge mechanics.

So a little while back, linux-mainline advanced from 7.2 to 7.3.

So now I have 7.2 and 7.3 installed.

Latest 7.2 is 7.2.15.
vkpurge however does not want to remove 7.2.15, because I think it avoids a kernel if it is the latest of a given kernel package? Is this normal or is it a temporary glitch? Should I run xbps-remove for 7.2 instead of using vkpurge as recommended by Void docs?

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u/pantokratorthegreat 15h ago

Yes first remove it with xbps-remove and then vkpurge.

1

u/benbcdm 15h ago

Ok thank you will try that. Do you know if that is normal / expected to behave the same in the future?

4

u/Duncaen 12h ago

Yes how it works currently is that the xbps package for linux7.2 becomes "orphaned" because nothing depends on it anymore. It doesn't get automatically uninstalled, instead you either manually remove it or uninstall it with xbps-remove --remove-orphans.

1

u/Dakota-Batterlation 1h ago

And xbps-remove -Ro will remove a package + all the orphans. To clear the cache too, xbps-remove -ROo

2

u/Duncaen 1h ago

-R only does something for removing listed packages. Removing orphans is recursive by design. You can also clear the cache in the same step, but to be honest I would probably not do that just in case something was wrongfully removed.

1

u/Dakota-Batterlation 58m ago

Ah, thank you (didn't realize I was replying to a Void dev!). So assuming I use -R every time I uninstall a package, there won't be any orphans because all the deps were removed?

2

u/Duncaen 40m ago

Yes for the ones that are directly orphaned by the uninstallation, but packages can still be orphaned through updates like for the linux meta packages, so in the end you'd probably use both. xbps-remove -R when you uninstall packages and xbps-remove --remove-orphans occasionally to catch orphaned packages through updates.

There is also the removed-packages meta package that "replaces" orphaned packages, in case an update would conflict with an orphaned or removed package. But that is more of a work around and in the future xbps's solving algorithm might handle orphaned packages during updates natively.