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Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr

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  Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr Patrick Bartek <patrick.bartek@gmail.com> - 2019-08-03 07:00 +0200
    Re: Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> - 2019-08-03 07:10 +0200
      Re: Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr Patrick Bartek <nemommxiv@gmail.com> - 2019-08-03 18:10 +0200
        Re: Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2019-08-03 18:40 +0200
          Re: Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr Patrick Bartek <nemommxiv@gmail.com> - 2019-08-03 22:00 +0200
    Re: Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2019-08-03 07:10 +0200
      Re: Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr Patrick Bartek <nemommxiv@gmail.com> - 2019-08-03 18:20 +0200

#212164 — Buster's Strange Behaviour Purging Firefox-esr

Hi! All --

Installed Buster (netinstall CD, LXDE desktop ONLY, system-utils) in
Virtualbox 6.0 on Stretch (sysvinit as init) host to test and evaluate.
Firefox-esr, of course, installed by default, but after installing
Google Chrome didn't need it anymore, so . . .  When I apt purge
firefox-esr, it was removed and epiphany-browser was installed its
place. ??? Strange. Never had that happen before.  When I purged or
removed epiphany-browser, firefox-esr was reinstalled in ITS place.

If I PINned both not to install, a lot of other files were installed
instead like verious ruby files, zip, vlc, etc. etc.  List is way too
long to post here.

Never, ever had this happen and I purged firefox-esr this way from both
Wheezy and Stretch.  It purged as it should have been with nothing
added.

Anyone got any ideas why this happened?  Or is this a nasty, ol' bug?

B

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#212165

On 2019-08-02 21:36 -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:

> Installed Buster (netinstall CD, LXDE desktop ONLY, system-utils) in
> Virtualbox 6.0 on Stretch (sysvinit as init) host to test and evaluate.
> Firefox-esr, of course, installed by default, but after installing
> Google Chrome didn't need it anymore, so . . .  When I apt purge
> firefox-esr, it was removed and epiphany-browser was installed its
> place. ??? Strange. Never had that happen before.  When I purged or
> removed epiphany-browser, firefox-esr was reinstalled in ITS place.
>
> If I PINned both not to install, a lot of other files were installed
> instead like verious ruby files, zip, vlc, etc. etc.  List is way too
> long to post here.
>
> Never, ever had this happen and I purged firefox-esr this way from both
> Wheezy and Stretch.  It purged as it should have been with nothing
> added.
>
> Anyone got any ideas why this happened?  Or is this a nasty, ol' bug?

That's almost surely because of libreoffice, whose -help packages depend
on particular browsers:

,----
| % LANG=C aptitude show libreoffice-help-en-us | grep Depends
| Depends: libreoffice-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), libreoffice-l10n-en-us, libreoffice-help-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium | firefox
`----

So if you remove firefox-esr it will be replaced by by epiphany-browser,
and vice versa.  If you uninstall both, apt will choose konqueror as the
next alternative which brings in all the other stuff.

Here is the relevant changelog entry from libreoffice:

,----
| libreoffice (1:6.1.0~rc2-1) experimental; urgency=low
| [...]
|   * debian/rules:
|     - don't depend on x-www-browser, only "qutebrowser" provides it.
|       Use firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium which is
|       the order xdg-open (which is used to actually open the help) does, too
|       (closes: #904022)
|
|  -- Rene Engelhard <rene@debian.org>  Thu, 19 Jul 2018 22:17:15 +0000
`----

Cheers,
       Sven

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#212202

On Sat, 03 Aug 2019 07:09:29 +0200
Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> wrote:

> On 2019-08-02 21:36 -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> 
> > Installed Buster (netinstall CD, LXDE desktop ONLY, system-utils) in
> > Virtualbox 6.0 on Stretch (sysvinit as init) host to test and evaluate.
> > Firefox-esr, of course, installed by default, but after installing
> > Google Chrome didn't need it anymore, so . . .  When I apt purge
> > firefox-esr, it was removed and epiphany-browser was installed its
> > place. ??? Strange. Never had that happen before.  When I purged or
> > removed epiphany-browser, firefox-esr was reinstalled in ITS place.
> >
> > If I PINned both not to install, a lot of other files were installed
> > instead like verious ruby files, zip, vlc, etc. etc.  List is way too
> > long to post here.
> >
> > Never, ever had this happen and I purged firefox-esr this way from both
> > Wheezy and Stretch.  It purged as it should have been with nothing
> > added.
> >
> > Anyone got any ideas why this happened?  Or is this a nasty, ol' bug?  
> 
> That's almost surely because of libreoffice, whose -help packages depend
> on particular browsers:
> 
> ,----
> | % LANG=C aptitude show libreoffice-help-en-us | grep Depends
> | Depends: libreoffice-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), libreoffice-l10n-en-us, libreoffice-help-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium | firefox
> `----
> 
> So if you remove firefox-esr it will be replaced by by epiphany-browser,
> and vice versa.  If you uninstall both, apt will choose konqueror as the
> next alternative which brings in all the other stuff.
> 
> Here is the relevant changelog entry from libreoffice:
> 
> ,----
> | libreoffice (1:6.1.0~rc2-1) experimental; urgency=low
> | [...]
> |   * debian/rules:
> |     - don't depend on x-www-browser, only "qutebrowser" provides it.
> |       Use firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium which is
> |       the order xdg-open (which is used to actually open the help) does, too
> |       (closes: #904022)
> |
> |  -- Rene Engelhard <rene@debian.org>  Thu, 19 Jul 2018 22:17:15 +0000
> `----

That was it!  Purged "help" component which is optional by the
way, to test if it was, and was able to purge epiphany-browser without
any gotchas.  Strange that Google Chrome isn't an "approved" browser.
If you're going to have such a dependency, it should be general (that's
the way I always tried to code) like System Default Browser or Any
Browser. 

LibreOffice Help in 5.2 that I use in Stretch doesn't have the browser
dependency. but since I never installed Help, I don't know what is used
to display it.

In any case, I normally have firefox quantum installed along with
Chrome.  So, out of curiosity, I'm going to test if that will satisfy
the dependency, too.

Thanks for your help -- without any dependencies ;-)

B

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#212207

On Sat 03 Aug 2019 at 09:05:52 (-0700), Patrick Bartek wrote:
> On Sat, 03 Aug 2019 07:09:29 +0200 Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> wrote:
> > On 2019-08-02 21:36 -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> > 
> > > Installed Buster (netinstall CD, LXDE desktop ONLY, system-utils) in
> > > Virtualbox 6.0 on Stretch (sysvinit as init) host to test and evaluate.
> > > Firefox-esr, of course, installed by default, but after installing
> > > Google Chrome didn't need it anymore, so . . .  When I apt purge
> > > firefox-esr, it was removed and epiphany-browser was installed its
> > > place. ??? Strange. Never had that happen before.  When I purged or
> > > removed epiphany-browser, firefox-esr was reinstalled in ITS place.
> > >
> > > If I PINned both not to install, a lot of other files were installed
> > > instead like verious ruby files, zip, vlc, etc. etc.  List is way too
> > > long to post here.
> > >
> > > Never, ever had this happen and I purged firefox-esr this way from both
> > > Wheezy and Stretch.  It purged as it should have been with nothing
> > > added.
> > >
> > > Anyone got any ideas why this happened?  Or is this a nasty, ol' bug?  
> > 
> > That's almost surely because of libreoffice, whose -help packages depend
> > on particular browsers:
> > 
> > ,----
> > | % LANG=C aptitude show libreoffice-help-en-us | grep Depends
> > | Depends: libreoffice-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), libreoffice-l10n-en-us, libreoffice-help-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium | firefox
> > `----
> > 
> > So if you remove firefox-esr it will be replaced by by epiphany-browser,
> > and vice versa.  If you uninstall both, apt will choose konqueror as the
> > next alternative which brings in all the other stuff.
> > 
> > Here is the relevant changelog entry from libreoffice:
> > 
> > ,----
> > | libreoffice (1:6.1.0~rc2-1) experimental; urgency=low
> > | [...]
> > |   * debian/rules:
> > |     - don't depend on x-www-browser, only "qutebrowser" provides it.
> > |       Use firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium which is
> > |       the order xdg-open (which is used to actually open the help) does, too
> > |       (closes: #904022)
> > |
> > |  -- Rene Engelhard <rene@debian.org>  Thu, 19 Jul 2018 22:17:15 +0000
> > `----
> 
> That was it!  Purged "help" component which is optional by the
> way, to test if it was, and was able to purge epiphany-browser without
> any gotchas.  Strange that Google Chrome isn't an "approved" browser.
> If you're going to have such a dependency, it should be general (that's
> the way I always tried to code) like System Default Browser or Any
> Browser. 
> 
> LibreOffice Help in 5.2 that I use in Stretch doesn't have the browser
> dependency. but since I never installed Help, I don't know what is used
> to display it.
> 
> In any case, I normally have firefox quantum installed along with
> Chrome.  So, out of curiosity, I'm going to test if that will satisfy
> the dependency, too.

Are either of chrome and quantum even Debian packages? How can
anything depend on them. OTOH it might be possible to make a dummy
package with /etc/alternatives to satisfy the dependency and still
use your favourite browser in their stead.

Cheers,
David.

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#212215

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:37:51 -0500
David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote:

> On Sat 03 Aug 2019 at 09:05:52 (-0700), Patrick Bartek wrote:
> > On Sat, 03 Aug 2019 07:09:29 +0200 Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> wrote:  
> > > On 2019-08-02 21:36 -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> > >   
> > > > Installed Buster (netinstall CD, LXDE desktop ONLY, system-utils) in
> > > > Virtualbox 6.0 on Stretch (sysvinit as init) host to test and evaluate.
> > > > Firefox-esr, of course, installed by default, but after installing
> > > > Google Chrome didn't need it anymore, so . . .  When I apt purge
> > > > firefox-esr, it was removed and epiphany-browser was installed its
> > > > place. ??? Strange. Never had that happen before.  When I purged or
> > > > removed epiphany-browser, firefox-esr was reinstalled in ITS place.
> > > >
> > > > If I PINned both not to install, a lot of other files were installed
> > > > instead like verious ruby files, zip, vlc, etc. etc.  List is way too
> > > > long to post here.
> > > >
> > > > Never, ever had this happen and I purged firefox-esr this way from both
> > > > Wheezy and Stretch.  It purged as it should have been with nothing
> > > > added.
> > > >
> > > > Anyone got any ideas why this happened?  Or is this a nasty, ol' bug?    
> > > 
> > > That's almost surely because of libreoffice, whose -help packages depend
> > > on particular browsers:
> > > 
> > > ,----
> > > | % LANG=C aptitude show libreoffice-help-en-us | grep Depends
> > > | Depends: libreoffice-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), libreoffice-l10n-en-us, libreoffice-help-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium | firefox
> > > `----
> > > 
> > > So if you remove firefox-esr it will be replaced by by epiphany-browser,
> > > and vice versa.  If you uninstall both, apt will choose konqueror as the
> > > next alternative which brings in all the other stuff.
> > > 
> > > Here is the relevant changelog entry from libreoffice:
> > > 
> > > ,----
> > > | libreoffice (1:6.1.0~rc2-1) experimental; urgency=low
> > > | [...]
> > > |   * debian/rules:
> > > |     - don't depend on x-www-browser, only "qutebrowser" provides it.
> > > |       Use firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium which is
> > > |       the order xdg-open (which is used to actually open the help) does, too
> > > |       (closes: #904022)
> > > |
> > > |  -- Rene Engelhard <rene@debian.org>  Thu, 19 Jul 2018 22:17:15 +0000
> > > `----  
> > 
> > That was it!  Purged "help" component which is optional by the
> > way, to test if it was, and was able to purge epiphany-browser without
> > any gotchas.  Strange that Google Chrome isn't an "approved" browser.
> > If you're going to have such a dependency, it should be general (that's
> > the way I always tried to code) like System Default Browser or Any
> > Browser. 
> > 
> > LibreOffice Help in 5.2 that I use in Stretch doesn't have the browser
> > dependency. but since I never installed Help, I don't know what is used
> > to display it.
> > 
> > In any case, I normally have firefox quantum installed along with
> > Chrome.  So, out of curiosity, I'm going to test if that will satisfy
> > the dependency, too.  
> 
> Are either of chrome and quantum even Debian packages? How can
> anything depend on them. OTOH it might be possible to make a dummy
> package with /etc/alternatives to satisfy the dependency and still
> use your favourite browser in their stead.

No. Neither are in Debian repos.  Chrome downloads as a .deb package or
rpm if you don't use Debian. I use gdebi to install it. Although you can
use dpkg, but there are a couple of dependencies you need to install as
well. Quantum is a zipped tar file that I manually as root copy
to /opt and manually create a .desktop file for it so it will be in the
menus, and I can create a quicklauncher in lxpanel.  Never tried having
the tar extracted directly to any other place except in the user
Download folder.

Still working on that last part of your reply.  Or some other
fix. As of now, no joy.  Can't even install firefox-esr anymore.  Apt
reports file not available or some-such.  Strange.  Of course, I have
been  doing a lot of things to Buster during my evaluation.  But it's
in a VM and I don't care if I break it.

Thanks for your reply.

B

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#212166

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Vi, 02 aug 19, 21:36:17, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> Hi! All --
> 
> Installed Buster (netinstall CD, LXDE desktop ONLY, system-utils) in
> Virtualbox 6.0 on Stretch (sysvinit as init) host to test and evaluate.
> Firefox-esr, of course, installed by default, but after installing
> Google Chrome didn't need it anymore, so . . .  When I apt purge
> firefox-esr, it was removed and epiphany-browser was installed its
> place. ??? Strange. Never had that happen before.  When I purged or
> removed epiphany-browser, firefox-esr was reinstalled in ITS place.
> 
> If I PINned both not to install, a lot of other files were installed
> instead like verious ruby files, zip, vlc, etc. etc.  List is way too
> long to post here.
> 
> Never, ever had this happen and I purged firefox-esr this way from both
> Wheezy and Stretch.  It purged as it should have been with nothing
> added.
> 
> Anyone got any ideas why this happened?  Or is this a nasty, ol' bug?

The package firefox-esr has:

Provides: gnome-www-browser, www-browser

which are "virtual packages" used in dependencies of other package to 
express they need a functionality, but don't care about the specific 
implementation.

Most likely something in your system depends on one or both virtual 
packages, so apt is installing another package providing the virtual 
package to satisfy the dependency.

The alternative would be to remove large portions of your system.

Hope this explains,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

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#212203

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 08:03:32 +0300
Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Vi, 02 aug 19, 21:36:17, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> > Hi! All --
> > 
> > Installed Buster (netinstall CD, LXDE desktop ONLY, system-utils) in
> > Virtualbox 6.0 on Stretch (sysvinit as init) host to test and evaluate.
> > Firefox-esr, of course, installed by default, but after installing
> > Google Chrome didn't need it anymore, so . . .  When I apt purge
> > firefox-esr, it was removed and epiphany-browser was installed its
> > place. ??? Strange. Never had that happen before.  When I purged or
> > removed epiphany-browser, firefox-esr was reinstalled in ITS place.
> > 
> > If I PINned both not to install, a lot of other files were installed
> > instead like verious ruby files, zip, vlc, etc. etc.  List is way too
> > long to post here.
> > 
> > Never, ever had this happen and I purged firefox-esr this way from both
> > Wheezy and Stretch.  It purged as it should have been with nothing
> > added.
> > 
> > Anyone got any ideas why this happened?  Or is this a nasty, ol' bug?  
> 
> The package firefox-esr has:
> 
> Provides: gnome-www-browser, www-browser
> 
> which are "virtual packages" used in dependencies of other package to 
> express they need a functionality, but don't care about the specific 
> implementation.
> 
> Most likely something in your system depends on one or both virtual 
> packages, so apt is installing another package providing the virtual 
> package to satisfy the dependency.
> 
> The alternative would be to remove large portions of your system.

It was LibreOffice-help-en-us that was causing the problem due to
specifically listed browser dependencies.  I purged the Help component
to test, and was able to remove both browsers with no problems.

Thanks for your input.

B

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