Hello, On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 04:38:29PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > On 2023-05-15 08:36:41 -0500, David Wright wrote: > > (Just guessing: if you installed it, you need it, and better > > hang on to it.) > > Wrong. It got installed automatically. I suppose that this is because > this was like that in the past, when I installed the machine in 2015, > thus before stretch was out.
If you mean that it got installed automatically in an older install, before the package was made optional, and then never removed, this would make sense as things don't get removed on upgrades unless there is a conflict. You even retain packages that are no longer in Debian. Most of my long-upgraded systems still have it, but newer installs don't. Some of my third party (i.e. not on my own hypervisor) bullseye VMs have it because they have cloud-init, which in bullseye depends on net-tools. Even though I don't use cloud-init. I see that in bookworm cloud-init no longer depends upon net-tools, so there's another route to install gone. I'm sure there's still a lot of cases where it's pulled in as a possible dependency but never knowingly used. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
