uninstall help

[Leonard Chatagnier]

--- On Tue, 11/4/08, Al Black <al-black at telus.net> wrote:

> From: Al Black <al-black at telus.net>
> Subject: uninstall help
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2008, 1:31 PM
> Hi gang,
> 
> I'm trying to completely remove the driver and cups
> wrapper for my
> brother printer so that I can reinstall again using apt.  
> 
> I'm running on a 64 bit system, and did the install
> using the
> instructions at:
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/instruction_prn1a.html
> 
> Including, yes, the --force-architecture option.
> 
> Reading through the apt manual, its not really clear what
> command I
> should use to wipe out the package and whatever changes the
> installation
> made while at the same time not obliterating some of the
> dependancies
> (e.g., lib32...).
> 
> Thanks 
> 
> al
> 
Hi Al,
Curious, are you having trouble with the non-approved setup from Brother or are you just wanting to do it the Ubuntu way.  So far, I've no detectable problems.
To your question:
You probably could just delete the /usr/local/Brother dir and all it's contents followed by anything in your /etc and /home/user/. dir that contain thing related to Brother.  That's not an approved way but I think it would work and not interfere with using apt to install the Ubuntu way. If I'm wrong someone will correct me, I'm sure. But be forewarned, I've not tried it and don't know that it will not interfere with a normal install.
If I were going to do this for myself I would simply do:

sudo aptitude purge <all .deb files Brother had you install on your PC>

You may have to go back to the Brother site and list all the debs you had to install to get them all but in my case I still have them on my Desktop.
If that didn't work I'd use:

sudo dkpg -P <same pkg names as above>

I haven't gone back to the Brother site to look but don't they tell you how to uninstall the drivers?
In any case, it should be safe to use either aptitude, dpkg or apt-get to remove the drivers. If you can't get them removed, report back to the list for more expert help or wait for someone else to reply.  HTH,
PS-BTW, I could only find a couple of brscan files in a synaptic search. None of the mfc490cw*.debs came up so this may not go smoothly, if at all in successfully removing the drivers.  One thing you can do is email Brother tech support asking them how to remove the drivers on Ubuntu and they will answer with the how-to at least on several occasions they have for me even when the answer was in the manual. Good luck and please let the list know what you did and the results.  Thanks,

Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net