How to Remove Software in Linux

Question: How do I remote software that I installed from my Linux dedicated server?

Answer: The answer to that question depends on how you installed the software in the first place. Once you establish how and where the software has been installed, you can determine how to remove it.

1. Package Manager – Most software should be installed with a package manager like YUM or Apt. If that is the case, you remove it with the normal command for the package manager:

yum remove [packagename]
apt-get remove [packagename]

2. Manual Deb, RPM, etc – If you installed a distribution package manually, you can remove it manually or use your package manager to remove it.

3. Binary Archive – If you were given a tar.gz or similar package with binaries inside, and you unpacked them to a directory, simply remove the directory. If the package had an installer program, try using that to uninstall it.

4. Source – If you compiled the software from source and used “make install” to install it, removing it may be more tricky. If you still have the source files, you can simply run “make uninstall”. Otherwise, you will have to find out where the files were installed and remove. They may be in several directories.

Removing Files on a Linux Server

An important part of file management is the removing of files that are no longer needed. Files, by their very nature, take up space, and something that is not needed should not take up space on a server, where space is money. The “rm” Linux command handles basic removal of files, but here are some additional settings you can use with “rm” to handle various types of removal tasks.

rm -l With the “-l” flag added after “rm”, the command will prompt you only when removing more than three files. You can use this as a precaution to keep from accidentally removing large amounts of data.

rm –one-file-system This instructs “rm” to remove only files that match the current file system, which is useful when removing several directories at once.

rm -r Recursive removal means that the top-level directory and the files and directories inside it will be removed together.

rm -v This displays information about the removal, rather than just returning to an empty command prompt.

rm -f To force removal without any prompting or warnings, use the “-f” flag, but please use it carefully.

The Delete Command in Linux

The second important command to know when using a Linux or Unix server is the rm command. This is the primary way to delete files from a server. Please use it with caution, as it is meant to be permanent. To delete a file, simply navigate to the directory with the file and type: rm filename.

To remove a file when you are not in its directory, you must type the full path: rm /home/user/public_html/filename.

If you want to delete a directory, you must make the deletion recursive by typing: rm -r directory-name.

You may delete multiple files, simply by entering each one on the line: rm filename1 filename2 filename3.

To delete directories and files without any prompting, enter rm -r -f filename1 filename2 directory3.

To learn more about the rm command, type: man rm at the command prompt.

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