Python Mercenaries
Snapd system provides a way to offer applications as snap packages. "A snap is an application containerised with all its dependencies." this should make installation of applications easier. However, it has several drawback to date.
.debSnapd can be fully removed from linux systems to date, and in critical production infrastructure I personally recommend removing for better performance and stability.
$ snap list $ cat <<EOF | sudo tee nuke_snapd.sh #!/bin/bash # Nuke snap echo Starting ... progress_index=0 until snap list 2>&1 | grep hello-world do for snap_app in $(snap list | grep -v 'Name' | awk '{print $1}') do echo Trying to remove ${snap_app} snap remove --purge ${snap_app} (( progress_index++ )) echo Progress index: ${progress_index} done done EOF $ chmod +x nuke_snapd.sh $ ./nuke_snapd.sh $ systemctl stop snapd $ systemctl disable snapd $ systemctl mask snapd $ apt purge snapd -y $ rm -rf /root/snap/ $ cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10 EOF $ rm -rf /snap $ rm -rf /var/snap $ rm -rf /var/lib/snapd
To remove the snapd application you must have all the snapd applications removed first.
# snap list Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes amazon-ssm-agent 3.2.2303.0 7983 latest/stable/… aws✓ classic core18 20231027 2812 latest/stable canonical✓ base core20 20240227 2264 latest/stable canonical✓ base lxd 5.0.3-babaaf8 27948 5.0/stable/… canonical✓ - snapd 2.61.2 21184 latest/stable canonical✓ snapd
We will use a brute force script to recursively attempt to remove listed snpad packages until all of them are gone.
# nano nuke_snap.sh #!/bin/bash # Nuke snap echo Starting ... progress_index=0 until snap list 2>&1 | grep hello-world do for snap_app in $(snap list | grep -v 'Name' | awk '{print $1}') do echo Trying to remove ${snap_app} snap remove --purge ${snap_app} (( progress_index++ )) echo Progress index: ${progress_index} done done # chmod +x nuke_snap.sh # ./nuke_snap.sh Starting ... Trying to remove amazon-ssm-agent 2024-04-09T15:24:02Z INFO Waiting for "snap.amazon-ssm-agent.amazon-ssm-agent.service" to stop. amazon-ssm-agent removed Progress index: 1 Trying to remove core18 core18 removed Progress index: 2 Trying to remove core20 error: cannot remove "core20": snap "core20" is not removable: snap is being used by snap lxd. Progress index: 3 Trying to remove lxd lxd removed Progress index: 4 Trying to remove snapd error: cannot remove "snapd": snap "snapd" is not removable: remove all other snaps first Progress index: 5 Trying to remove core20 core20 removed Progress index: 6 Trying to remove snapd snapd removed Progress index: 7 No snaps are installed yet. Try 'snap install hello-world'.
Having fully removed all the applications we can remove the snapd service and purge the application from apt package manager.
# systemctl stop snapd systemctl disable snapd systemctl mask snapd apt purge snapd -y rm -rf ~/snap/ rm -rf /root/snap/ Warning: Stopping snapd.service, but it can still be activated by: snapd.socket Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/snapd.service. Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/snapd.service → /dev/null. Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required: squashfs-tools Use 'apt autoremove' to remove it. The following packages will be REMOVED: snapd* 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 59 not upgraded. After this operation, 102 MB disk space will be freed. (Reading database ... 132875 files and directories currently installed.) Removing snapd (2.58+22.04.1) ... Processing triggers for dbus (1.12.20-2ubuntu4.1) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.10.2-1) ... (Reading database ... 132778 files and directories currently installed.) Purging configuration files for snapd (2.58+22.04.1) ... rmdir: failed to remove '/etc/systemd/system/snapd.mounts.target.wants': No such file or directory Discarding preserved snap namespaces Final directory cleanup Removing extra snap-confine apparmor rules Removing snapd cache Removing snapd state # sudo cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10 EOF Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10
At this point we will not need to worry about snap again and all thats left is cleaning up the directories left behind.
# snap Command 'snap' not found, but can be installed with: apt install snapd root@ip-172-31-25-48:~# apt install snapd Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done Package snapd is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source Error: Package 'snapd' has no installation candidate $ rm -rf ~/snap $ sudo rm -rf /snap $ sudo rm -rf /var/snap $ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/snapd
This demonstration was done on an AWS VM. you may have noticed the amazon-ssm-agent package was listed from snap. This means that snap is actually a requirement for AWS VMs as this is a key application used to enable information and configuration with the aws native services that compliment the ec2 instances.
Ultimately Canonical is forcing the market to adopt its snapd applications, but this package management solution has almost entirely hurt the linux market in my opinion. The major upside is its supposed to make it easier to publish new applications and therefore might lower the barrier to entry for developers looking to provide a new applications. While adoption is a market force so is stability, performance, disk footprint, configuration management, automation, end user experience.
While Canonical may have some what consolidated applications to be dependent on their Snapd package framework, I think ultimately it will be a bitter pill swallowed like Jenkins is in CICD, and like Jenkins people will actively seek viable alternatives.