Problem with uninstalling virtualbox

Question

I am using Ubuntu 12.10.

I downloaded from virtualbox.org the virtualbox package 4.2.4*.deb.

I wanted to install it with dpkg -i and terminal requested me to use command alien instead.

So I did alien <package> then dpkg -i <package> and used virtualbox.

Now I want to uninstall virtualbox (because something went wrong) because it was not installed with sudo apt-get install.

I want to use command dpkg -e <package> or dpkg --purge <package> but this ends with report

file or directory not found

Then

sudo dpkg -l | grep virtualbox

reports:

ii  virtualbox-4.2                                  4.2.4-81684~Ubuntu~quantal                     amd64        Oracle VM VirtualBox
rc  virtualbox-qt                                   4.1.18-dfsg-1ubuntu1.1                         amd64        x86 virtualization solution - Qt based user interface

what should I do next ?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 29 '12 at 18:44

2

Run this command in a terminal window:

sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-4.2 virtualbox-qt

That should remove them both.

edited Nov 29 '12 at 18:44

Eric Carvalho

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answered Nov 29 '12 at 18:10

MiJyn

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thank you ! I was blind ! of course sudo apt-get purge virtualbox is not sufficient and so system does not know which package. sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-4.2 virtualbox-qt is the solution ! – dschinn1001 Nov 29 '12 at 18:51
Glad to know it works! Could you mark it as the correct answer then? – MiJyn Nov 29 '12 at 18:52

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 29 '12 at 21:43

2

You can also use sudo apt-get purge virtualbox*, which should also remove both.

edited Nov 29 '12 at 21:43

Eric Carvalho

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answered Nov 29 '12 at 20:37

Marlin Snyder

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 09 '14 at 03:09

1

Try like this

sudo apt-get --remove purge virtualbox-4.2 virtualbox-qt

edited Mar 09 '14 at 03:09

Florian Diesch

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answered Mar 08 '14 at 04:14

Beginner

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moin. yes this is more correct ... thx. that was a while ago. Til later. – dschinn1001 Mar 09 '14 at 07:45

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 23 '15 at 06:38

I also had run like this

sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-\*

But was not removing completely

To me following worked (Was trying this on Ubuntu 15.10 and Oracle Virtualbox 5.x)

dpkg -l | grep virtualbox

which listed as below

# dpkg -l | grep virtualbox ii virtualbox-5.0:i386 5.0.12 104815~Ubuntu~wily i386 Oracle VM VirtualBox

Then i used the command

sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-5.0:i386

Problem with uninstalling virtualbox

4 Answers4

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