Comments on: How to remove Mono from Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope [Updated]

By: sjpn

sjpn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:52:58 +0000

fyi, in karmic you need to also remove mono-runtime

By: DnS

DnS — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:37:31 +0000

Why remove Mono ?! I want BSOD on my Micro$NU/Linux box too !

By: APEBOX.ORG - » Blog Archive » The Pledge

APEBOX.ORG - » Blog Archive » The Pledge — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:29:18 +0000

[...] I believe Free Software is about freedom – for both users and developers [10][11] [...]

By: alex

alex — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:31:32 +0000

Apparently the mess left behind by mono when it is purged is a known bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mono/+bug/350715

There are no plans to fix this until karmic, so users will have to delete /usr/lib/mono manually if they want a completely clean system.

By: alex

alex — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:13:25 +0000

Thanks for providing an apt-get line to purge this junk from my system — saves me some time. Unfortunately, Jaunty systems that use this line are *still* infested with mono components! There’s still about 1.4MB of gack to clean up in /usr/lib/mono/gac (numerous directories full of mono DLLs).

I tried getting rid of it by purging “cli-common” using Synaptic (or by typing: sudo apt-get purge cli-common), since it is yet another mono package that isn’t uninstalled using the apt-get line you provide. However, the mess still remains.

Then, I used the apt-file utility (installed using Synaptic) to search for the package responsible for leaving these DLLs on the system. For example, one of many such dlls in this directory tree is NDesk.DBus.dll. Searching for it gives:

# apt-file search NDesk.DBus.dll
libndesk-dbus1.0-cil: /usr/lib/cli/ndesk-dbus-1.0/NDesk.DBus.dll
libndesk-dbus1.0-cil: /usr/lib/cli/ndesk-dbus-1.0/NDesk.DBus.dll.mdb

However libndesk-dbus1.0-cil is *supposed* to have been purged (according to synaptic). It seems these mono packages are NOT actually purging all the files they create when they are uninstalled, instead leaving little messes behind. This is the same sort of crap that MS-Windows installers/uninstallers are famous for, so I guess that’s why they did it.

Anyway, bugs should probably be filed against all the mono packages that are not purging their files properly. I welcome anyone who has time to investigate this matter further and file bugs against the packages responsible.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to just delete the entire /usr/lib/mono/ directory (after tarring it up in a backup file), and hope this doesn’t cause any unforeseen problems:

# cd /usr/lib
# tar czpf mono-gack.tar.gz mono/
# rm -rf /usr/lib/mono

I’ll post again if things break.

By: jay

jay — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:01:20 +0000

thanks! again! it’s like a ritual now when installing a new ubuntu – install – set it up the way i like it – google “opensourcerer remove mono 9.04″ – feel better.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:05:43 +0000

@Mark
Thanks for the hint. Looks and feels rather good!

By: DavidEF

DavidEF — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:57:32 +0000

Thanks for this. I didn’t know Ubuntu used mono in its default install. I have run the apt-get purge command you gave, and it removed 65.3MB of stuff. That is a lot for just two ’simple’ applications that I don’t even use.

By: Blog personal de Vicent Cubells » Blog Archive » Adéu Mono

Blog personal de Vicent Cubells » Blog Archive » Adéu Mono — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:19:05 +0000

[...] com per casualitat he trobat com llevar-me de davant la dependència que té el meu sistema de mono, he decidit tirar pel davant i purgar tot allò que [...]

By: Alan Lord

Alan Lord — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:06:46 +0000

@Lupine,

Many thanks for that.

I will update the page and have also removed the infection from my PC already. There didn’t appear to any further dependencies.