PPA purge does not seem to remove the PPA?

I did:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:cybermax-dexter/sdl2-backport

and got:

Updating packages lists
W: The repository ' xenial Release' does not have a Release file.
E: Failed to fetch 404 Not Found [IP: 91.....]
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
Warning: apt-get update failed for some reason

When I look in software and updates-> other software, the PPA is still there, and also in the sources.list.d folder, but not in the sources.list file.

I realised that the W: part is because the PPA is not compatible with xenial. But I still don't what the two E: parts mean, and how to purge the PPA.

I can remove manually, but I want to make sure I have purged all associated files etc, as it is the third party, and I don't want anything dodgy staying on my computer...? I'm a noob btw, so maybe a bit ignorant on this...

Thanks for your time!

1 Answer

Let's start with two items:

• The name of the PPA: SDL2 Backport to Bionic.
• Your release from the PPA URL you provided: Xenial (which is not Bionic)

From these two facts, we can draw a conclusion: The 18.04 PPA is unlikely to have provided any usable packages to your 16.04 system.

The corollary to that conclusion is that the PPA has perhaps never worked for you, and has only returned error messages every time you tried.

How to check for the PPA files on your system:

1. The list of the 10 packages and versions provided by the PPA is here

2. Use apt-cache policy <package_name> to check the source and version number of each of the listed packages. If the package version and source match the PPA, uninstall the package.

Here's an example:

$ apt-cache policy hello <--- The example page name is "hello"
hello: Installed: 2.10-2ubuntu2 <--- Version number. Should EXACTLY match the version number provided by the PPA Candidate: 2.10-2ubuntu2 +-- Sources. The PPA should be listed as a source. Version table: V *** 2.10-2ubuntu2 500 500 focal/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Deleting the PPA:

There are two steps to deleting a PPA:

• Uninstall the packages (you did this in the section above)
• Delete the apt source , so apt doesn't re-install the packages

You already found the apt source: A file in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory. Delete that file: sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/<filename>. You can also use your Software & Sources control panel to delete the PPA source.

Good practice is to run an apt-update after making any change to your apt sources: sudo apt-get update. The update should have no errors or warnings.