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I installed tripwire and by mistake asked it to install postfix. How can I remove postfix and not lose tripwire?

root@blah:~# apt-get remove postfix 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mailutils postfix tripwire
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 10 not upgraded.
After this operation, 16.4 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

-

root@blah:~# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 15.10
Release:        15.10
Codename:       wily
user584583
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  • Can you just stop Postfix and disable it at startup? You can force and uninstall and not remove dependencies, but that can (and probably will) lead to an unstable system. If you do want to remove, try `sudo dpkg -r --force-all postfix` Add a -P to purge everything. Make sure you understand the risks before uninstalling it. – Gmck Jan 14 '16 at 17:42

1 Answers1

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Postfix most likely your default MTA and the Tripwire package has it defined as a dependency. This is why when you attempt to remove postfix it takes Tripwire with it.

If you already have a mail agent installed you can remove postfix and reinstall tripwire using apt-get --nodeps.

Personally I'd avoid this and leave well enough alone. You can always leave it installed but the services disabled until needed.

Tim Brigham
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