the following
pacman -Qqd | pacman -Rsu --print -
give me the result
dbus-units-37-3
However, it is a dependency on systemd
What is correct ? Need it or need it not ?
Hi @weingeist,
DBus is, indeed, an important dependency. I strongly suspect you forgot the -t argument in the first pacman command, because:
-t, --unrequired
Restrict or filter output to print only packages neither required nor
optionally required by any currently installed package. Specify this
option twice to include packages which are optionally, but not di‐
rectly, required by another package.
…and the command should actually be:
pacman -Qqdt | pacman -Rsu --print -
$ pacman -Qi dbus-units
Name : dbus-broker-units
Version : 37-3
Description : Linux D-Bus Message Broker - Service units
Provides : dbus-units
Depends On : dbus dbus-broker
Required By : systemd
Packager : Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) <heftig@archlinux.org>
Build Date : Sat 14 Feb 2026 14:59:16 GMT
Install Date : Wed 18 Feb 2026 15:50:36 GMT
Install Reason : Installed as a dependency for another package
$ sudo pacman -R dbus-broker
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing dbus-broker breaks dependency 'dbus-broker' required by dbus-broker-units
This command will list packages installed as a dependency in the short form.
Whether you should remove it or not depends on which package it has been installed as a dependency for.
The better question is - what are you trying to do?
If you are reading the best practise guide - it is safe
pacman -Qdtq | sudo pacman -Rns -
pacman -Qqd | sudo pacman -Rsu -
Do note the differences in the commands -Rns vs -Rsu where the -u is filtering the output to include only packages which are not needed.
pacman will never - on itself - remove a package that is required for the system to function.
The cmdline flags -Qqd will include packages which may be vital to the system - piping these to a pacman cmdline with -Rns will result in a message - no can do - whereas piping them to cmdline -Rsu will skip packages which are in fact needed.
My Question is the Result of
pacman -Qdtq | sudo pacman -Rns -
Fehler: Argument »-« mit leerer Standardeingabe angegeben
This happens because the first list generated by pacman -Qdtq is empty.
The same command can be executed like this and it would provide a more descriptive message - still the list is empty - no targets or packages specified.
$ sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq)
error: no targets specified (use -h for help)
Okay, that makes sense.
Removing unused packages (orphans) - pacman/Tips and tricks - ArchWiki
For recursively removing orphans and their configuration files:
# pacman -Qdtq | pacman -Rns -If no orphans were found, the output is
error: argument '-' specified with empty stdin. This is expected as no arguments were passed topacman -Rns
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