Removed packages still showing up in inventory

Question

Debian packages that have been removed (rc) still show up in inventory.

Running strace on the ocsinventory-agent it shows that the software inventory collection is done using the command stat (e.g. "stat("/var/lib/dpkg/info/exim4-base.list", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=155, ...}) = 0" ) which catches software installed as well as removed, but not purged from a system.

I consider this a bug as it shouldn't inventory removed packages.

Answer 1

What version of the agent are you running? This doesn't appear to be an issue with v2.10, however I was able to replicate with v2.4. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Debian packages with 'rc' are still inside the system : cf 'dpkg -l'.

The best is to remove totally packages : may be

apt-get remove --purge $(dpkg -l | awk '/^rc/{print $2}')

Answer 3

@jacquesh I know how to totally purge packages, but that's not the point.
The issue is that ocs-inventory is supposed to show what packages ARE installed on a system, not what packages ARE installed + packages that have been installed, later removed, but not purged.

I think ocs should use the command below to obtain the proper inventory of only INSTALLED packages:

dpkg -l | grep ^ii

Answer 4

The question is 'how agent ask about debian packages ?'

If agent ask using 'dpkg -l' without 'grep -v "^rc', it's get all packages.

But, keep in mind, usually you don't have 'rc' packages ...