Dnf autoremove is listing grub2-tools-efi since last F31 update

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Hello,

dnf autoremove is listing grub2-tools-efi since the last update for all my F31 setups. Is this intented or a dnf bug?

2

Is there a reason you need to use autoremove?

I have been running fedora for many releases and have never used autoremove.

It claims that autoremove is to:

Doing a test run here after several years of use (without actually allowing it to remove anything) on my system only shows about 10 packages that would be removed. That is miniscule and unless you really - really - need to run it I would advise against doing so.

What you are seeing is likely a result of a delay in mirror sync for the repos.

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3

My question is leaned towards understanding the background, why dnf autoremove is listing grub2-tools-efi.

As I’m managing multiple systems I’d like to keep them as “clean” as possible - clean here meaning distro-installed packages are kept in sync with the distro, unnecessary dependencies removed and package configurations only modified if a system-specific fix is necessary.

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TL;DR: Don’t use autoremove, unless you know what you are doing. It may break your system!

Here is a related Thread: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/is-dnf-autoremove-safe/75853/7

If you search the internet for ‘dnf autoremove’, you will see many questions of the same kind and complains about dnf behavior. Or look at the vast amount of bugs reported on the autoremove function of dnf. There is cases where dnf autoremove wants to remove kernels. I saw another case where it tried to remove dnf itself.

My advice: Just never use autoremove, unless you know what you are doing. It may break your system!

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[paul@localhost ~]$ dnf repoquery -l grub2-tools-efi
DerniĂšre vĂ©rification de l’expiration des mĂ©tadonnĂ©es effectuĂ©e il y a 0:00:53 le lun 30 mar 2020 17:57:05.
/usr/bin/grub2-glue-efi
/usr/bin/grub2-render-label

Well, both commands seems to be used for Mac systems
 does not look very important to me.

have:
/* TRANSLATORS: This file takes a text and creates a graphical representation of it,
putting the result into .disk_label file. The result is always stored to file and
never shown directly, so don’t use “show” as synonym for render. Use “create” if
“render” doesn’t translate directly. */

grub-glue-efi creates an Apple fat EFI binary from two EFI binaries.

6

Exactly as @pauld says, it’s a minor package.

All you need do is look at the contents of grub2-tools-efi:

$ rpm -ql grub2-tools-efi |grep -v build-id
/usr/bin/grub2-render-label
/usr/sbin/grub2-macbless
/usr/share/man/man1/grub2-render-label.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/grub2-macbless.8.gz

It is most assuredly not a mistake that dnf is recommending its removal, it’s a useless package to 99.9% of the userbase.

(Note: I’m not claiming dnf autoremove never screws up. But you asked about this specific package, and it’s definitely not screwing up here.)

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