Provide complete uninstall instructions
This issue was migrated from bug 9222 in our old bug tracker.
Original bug information:
Reporter: joshua paul
Status: CONFIRMED
Product: Wireshark
Component: Documentation
OS: OS X 10.8
Platform: x86
Version: 1.10.2
Attachments:
remove-wireshark: Script to uninstall Wireshark
See also: Issue #10320
Activity
Build Information:
Provide complete uninstall instructions for mac users. How do I uninstall? 1. Remove /Applications/Wireshark 2. sudo rm -Rf /Applications/Wireshark.app/ 3. Remove /Library/Wireshark 4. sudo rm -Rf /Library/Wireshark 5. Remove /Library/StartupItems/ChmodBPF 6. sudo rm -Rf /Library/StartupItems/ChmodBPF 7. Remove the access_bpf group. 8. sudo dscl . -delete /Groups/access_bpfadded docs enhancement osmacos version1.10 labels
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Or provide an uninstaller script somewhere in the app bundle to do it for you.
(BTW, "Remove /Library/Wireshark" isn't part of the uninstall instructions; it dates back to the first version of the app packaging code in the source tree, quickly replaced by a version that installed the command-line tool scripts in /usr/local/bin. The "Read me first" file wasn't updated to reflect that; I just updated it to do so.)
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(In reply to comment #2)
> In case that MACOS really doesn't have a proper packaging system that
> provides uninstall support our package should install an uninstall script.Sadly, OS X does not, in fact, have a proper packaging system that provides uninstall support.
It does have command-line tools that can somewhat help an uninstall script. I've attached a script I wrote when doing testing; the ambitious can, if they want, make it use the output of "pkgutil --files" on the packages to get a list of files in the package, sort it in reverse order, and use that to remove the files, rather than wiring in the pathnames of directories to remove (to handle packages installed in a non-standard location).
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(In reply to comment #4)
> It does have command-line tools that can somewhat help an uninstall script.
> I've attached a script I wrote when doing testing; the ambitious can, if
> they want, make it use the output of "pkgutil --files" on the packages to
> get a list of files in the package, sort it in reverse order, and use that
> to remove the files, rather than wiring in the pathnames of directories to
> remove (to handle packages installed in a non-standard location)....and to remove the access_bpf group.
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(In reply to comment #4) > ... make it use the output of "pkgutil --files" on the packages to > get a list of files in the package, sort it in reverse order, and use that > to remove the files, rather than wiring in the pathnames of directories to > remove (to handle packages installed in a non-standard location). Good luck with that, at least for the command-line tools package: $ pkgutil --files org.wireshark.cli.pkg | sort -r | more wireshark $ The rest are all symlinks, which are set up by a post-install script and aren't officially in the package, and the full path where it was installed isn't there anyway (although it's hardwired to /usr/local/bin). It might work for the others, however. Figuring out how to take a reverse-sorted list of pathnames (which means they should be bottom-up in the directory hierarchy) and remove both files and directories in that list is left as an exercise for the reader. It appears, from a quick test, that the rm command will refuse to remove directories, even when run as root (not something to assume is the case on OS X, given that Time Machine uses hard links to directories to do de-duplication on backup trees). -
Note also that the script removes both the old ChmodBPF startup item and the new launchd launch daemon; this is what should be done, so that it can remove either older Wireshark packages that installed a startup item and newer packages that install a launch daemon.
So the script shouldn't use the output of "pkgutil -files" to remove the command-line tools (as per a previous comment) or ChmodBPF (as per the previous paragraph). The only package remaining is the app bundle, and that's self-contained. Perhaps the script could use the output of "pkgutil --pkg-info" to determine where that's located, and just do an "rm -rf" on it.
mentioned in issue #10320