How to undo sudo add-apt-repository?

Question

I ran

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/indicators

to install my-weather-indicator but it requires GTK3 and I don't want to proceed further.

So I'd like to undo that command. I've checked my /etc/apt/source.list but I didn't find any line related to it.

What should I do now?

Solution 1

add-apt-repository creates a new file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d for ppa repositories. Besides deleting the appropriate file you also should delete the added gpg key:

1. get the keyid from apt-key list
2. delete it via apt-key del $ID

Solution 2

From Ubuntu's manual pages (man add-apt-repository):

-r, --remove Remove the specified repository

So...

sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:noobslab/indicators

This removes it from the repo list in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.

Depending on what you are doing, BEFORE you run the above command - If an installed package from that repo is newer than the same package in a standard repo, then manually downgrade with ppa-purge:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:noobslab/indicators

For Debian, just delete the .list file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

Solution 3

If you want to undo add-apt-repository, having used a format like e.g.

sudo add-apt-repository \
   "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
   $(lsb_release -cs) \
   stable"

Use the output displayed by the following command to find the repository you want to delete

grep ^ /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*

Example output:

/etc/apt/sources.list:#deb cdrom:[Linux Mint 17.3 _Rosa_ - Release amd64 20151128]/ trusty contrib main non-free /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu trusty stable ...

In this example /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list would have the repository to undo/remove. Edit the file and remove its line.

Comments

[Cadoiz]

If somebody is looking for how to do that in (open)SUSE/SLES, you can consider this zypper guide: zypper removerepo xyz

[Sigur]

Where can I check if it worked? Are there some entries in source.list?

[Christopher]

@Sigur Yes! The .list files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.

[Sigur]

Your first suggestion returns You are about to add the following PPA to your system:. The second one returns sudo: ppa-purge: command not found. I still have .list in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

[Sigur]

Item 1 returns pub 1024R/36FD5529 2010-12-14 uid Launchpad PPA for noobslab. What is its $ID?

[sunnysideup]

@Sigur 36FD5529 is the id, 1024 is the keylength and the rest is the uid

[Sigur]

It works with del instead of delete.

[Mikhail Batcer]

Strangely, I'm on 14.04 and there is no -r nor --remove option for me.

[Andrew]

Why isn't this the accepted answer...

[Michael]

strange, on 18.04 I had to sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

[Michael]

also, i don't know if the ppa-purge succeeded or not because it says nothing about removing anything, but complains about an unrelated ppa not having a release file, after which it says Warning: apt-get update failed for some reason

[Konrad Rudolph]

Why use grep ^ instead cat?