How to uninstall snap?
I use Ubuntu for 12 years, and snap in the recent releases of Ubuntu is really disgrace. It creates lots of problems. After an upgrade, Chromium does not start with the error:
chromium_chromium.desktop[122932]: snap-confine has elevated permissions and is not confined but should be. Refusing to continue to avoid permission escalation attacks: Operation not permitted
If a package changes the configuration in a new version, it's its responsibility to make it work. Now, I have to reconfigure it after each start by
sudo apparmor_parser -r /etc/apparmor.d/*snap-confine*
How can I fully uninstall snap and re-install its packages by regular apt?
I have not many packages handled by snap.
snap list
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
chromium 85.0.4183.121 1328 latest/stable canonical✓ -
core18 20200724 1885 latest/stable canonical✓ base
gnome-3-34-1804 0+git.3556cb3 60 latest/stable canonical✓ -
gtk-common-themes 0.1-36-gc75f853 1506 latest/stable canonical✓ -
snap-store 3.36.0-80-g208fd61 467 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
snapd 2.46.1 9279 latest/stable canonical✓ snapd
My question is how to safely remove snap. From the snap list, I see gnome depends on snap.
In Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.10, I removed snapd following this steps:
# stop snapd services
sudo systemctl stop snapd && sudo systemctl disable snapd
# purge snapd
sudo apt purge snapd
# remove no longer needed folders
rm -rf ~/snap
sudo rm -rf /snap /var/snap /var/lib/snapd /var/cache/snapd /usr/lib/snapd
Then, to avoid that other applications may reinstall it (chromium-browser is an example of application that restores snapd even if installed via apt) you can create a file no-snap.pref by issuing:
sudo -H gedit /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snap.pref
and then copying the following content in it:
# To install snapd, specify its version with 'apt install snapd=VERSION'
# where VERSION is the version of the snapd package you want to install.
Package: snapd
Pin: release a=*
Pin-Priority: -10
Full credit to Don Prince for a comprehensive and effective solution from this link
I recommend you run the commands individually. Some you won't need, and for some you may need one or two extra lines.
Run the exploratory informational commands listed in the comments to determine the specific situation in your install.
Also installs Deb packaged last known Chromium and pins it to prevent snapd taking over again in future. Awesome! Thanks Don!
#!/bin/bash
# probably best to manually type this commands individually checking for problems
# snap list | grep -v "^Name" | awk {'print "sudo snap remove " $1'}
sudo snap remove snap-store
sudo snap remove gtk-common-themes
sudo snap remove gnome-3-28-1804
sudo snap remove gnome-3-34-1804
sudo snap remove core18
sudo snap remove snapd
snap list # expect: No snaps are installed yet. Try 'snap install hello-world'.
sudo umount /run/snap/ns
sudo systemctl disable snapd.service
sudo systemctl disable snapd.socket
sudo systemctl disable snapd.seeded.service
sudo systemctl disable snapd.autoimport.service
sudo systemctl disable snapd.apparmor.service
sudo rm -rf /etc/apparmor.d/usr.lib.snapd.snap-confine.real
sudo systemctl start apparmor.service
# df | grep snap | awk {'print "sudo umount " $6'}
sudo umount /snap/chromium/1424
sudo umount /snap/gtk-common-themes/1514
sudo umount /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/145
sudo umount /snap/core18/1944
sudo umount /snap/snapd/10492
sudo umount /var/snap
sudo apt purge snapd
# find / -type d -iname '*snap*'
# (I left the kernel entries well alone)
rm -rf ~/snap
sudo rm -rf /snap /var/snap /var/lib/snapd /var/cache/snapd /usr/lib/snapd
sudo rm -rf /root/snap /root/snap/snap-store /usr/share/doc/libsnapd-glib1 /usr/share/doc/gir1.2-snapd-1
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/snapd
Package: snapd
Pin: origin *
Pin-Priority: -1
EOF
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/pin-xalt7x-chromium-deb-vaapi
Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-xalt7x-chromium-deb-vaapi
Pin-Priority: 1337
EOF
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xalt7x/chromium-deb-vaapi
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
I'm agree with you about snaps.
At the end I've completly removed snaps from my system by:
sudo apt-get purge snapd
rm -rf ~/snap
sudo rm -rf /snap
sudo rm -rf /var/snap
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/snapd
Now the system works well Although I had to substitude snap programs with their APT / or .deb file version when available. Unfortunately In my case I've lost 1 application that I need but is the price I had to pay, but I gained less occupied disk space and slight time gain during boot.
gnome is yet installed and works regularly as before
