On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 18:52:58 +0900, Joel <rees(a)ddcom.co.jp&gt; wrote: they are java related packages. they might have been installed by default. if you dont want remove them. this is not a bug -- Regards, Rahul Sundaram

Joel wrote: $ ls -l /usr/bin/rmiregistry /usr/bin/jar lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Feb 15 20:37 /usr/bin/jar -> /etc/alternatives/jar lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Feb 15 20:37 /usr/bin/rmiregistry -> /etc/alternatives/rmiregistry They're symlinks into the Red Hat alternatives scheme. man 8 alternatives says: It is possible for several programs fulfilling the same or similar functions to be installed on a single system at the same time. For example, many systems have several text editors installed at once. This gives choice to the users of a system, allowing each to use a different editor, if desired, but makes it difficult for a program to make a good choice of editor to invoke if the user has not specified a particular preference. The alternatives system aims to solve this problem. A generic name in the filesystem is shared by all files providing interchangeable func- tionality. The alternatives system and the system administrator together determine which actual file is referenced by this generic name. For example, if the text editors ed(1) and nvi(1) are both installed on the system, the alternatives system will cause the generic name /usr/bin/editor to refer to /usr/bin/nvi by default. The system administrator can override this and cause it to refer to /usr/bin/ed instead, and the alternatives system will not alter this setting until explicitly requested to do so. So they allow you to have a number of Java virtual machines, and easily swap from one to another. James. -- James Wilkinson | "!" sez I. And "?". After a few speechless seconds Exeter Devon UK | I come out with "%^&*". Unless I come up with E-mail address: james | something plausible soon I'm going to run out of @westexe.demon.co.uk | special characters. -- Ben at lspace.org

Joel wrote: rpm is your friend! You can use it to figure out what package they're in: matt@tomis ~ $ rpm -q -f /usr/bin/jar libgcj-3.3.3-7 and then test removing it to see what other packages depend on it: matt@tomis /etc/alternatives $ /bin/su Password: root@tomis /etc/alternatives $ rpm -e --test libgcj error: Failed dependencies: libgcj.so.4 is needed by (installed) gettext-0.14.1-2.1 libgcj = 3.3.3 is needed by (installed) libgcj-devel-3.3.3-7 libgcj >= 3.3.3 is needed by (installed) gcc-java-3.3.3-7 In this case, if I didn't want GNU's java compiler, I could remove gcc-java and libgcj-devel, but there might be some other programs that use gettext: root@tomis /etc/alternatives $ rpm -e --test gettext error: Failed dependencies: gettext is needed by (installed) mutt-1.4.1-6 You'll need to remove the --test option to actually remove the packages, if you want to do that. root@tomis /etc/alternatives $ man rpm -- Matt Matthew Zimmerman Interdisciplinary Biophysics, University of Virginia http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mdz4c/