Opkg doesn't recognize that it installed a package

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I got overzealous and installed the nmap-full package, which takes up most of my space on the device (TP-Link Archer A7). Unfortunately, opkg remove nmap-full simply says "No pagages removed." Likewise, opkg list-installed | grep nmap shows nothing. Yet, the files are there:

/overlay/upper/usr/lib/opkg/info/nmap-full.prerm
/overlay/upper/usr/lib/opkg/info/nmap-full.control
/overlay/upper/usr/lib/opkg/info/nmap-full.postinst
/overlay/upper/usr/bin/nmap
/usr/bin/nmap
/usr/lib/opkg/info/nmap-full.prerm
/usr/lib/opkg/info/nmap-full.control
/usr/lib/opkg/info/nmap-full.postinst

The router was abruptly turned off by accident at some point after installing nmap-full. My guess is that somehow the changes to the list of installed packages did not persist when that happened.

But now I'm in a situation where I can't remove the package to free up the space (so I can't reinstall the package to delete it). Nor can I remove the files (I am warned that the filesystem is read-only, even though I am root!). What are my options here? I spent a lot of time setting up the network, and now I only have 140k free on the device. I'd rather not have to redo the whole setup

2

Chances are that your router ran out of space while installing dependencies, and never actually installed nmap-full l, this why it didn’t report it as installed.

You could uninstall the dependencies manually, instead. However, the fastest solution may be to simply make a backup, reset your router to defaults, then restore the backup. (The backup usually only contains config files unless you have set it to backup other items)

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the help. That did the trick, and I didn't have to do any manual configuration other than reinstalling adblock. :+1: :+1: :+1:

4

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