SnipeOS

Tutorial

Uninstall YaCy completely

A dedicated SnipeOS cleanup script removes YaCy and everything the installer brought in (nginx configs, certbot, users, leftover packages). Prefer watching? See the uninstall YaCy video. Installing? See the Install YaCy guide.

Video walkthrough

Start menu, terminal, confirm with y, and YaCy is gone including what it brought in.

Terminal
curl -fsSL https://snipebrowser.com/os/uninstall-yacy.sh -o /tmp/uninstall-yacy.sh && sudo bash /tmp/uninstall-yacy.sh

Open on YouTube · Install guide · Easy tutorials

Why a dedicated script

One of the places Linux can fall short is uninstalling software. Remove an app through the standard package manager and you often get the application gone, but everything that came in with it still sitting on your system: nginx configs, certbot timers, dependency packages, user accounts, service files. They just stay there.

This YaCy cleanup script removes everything the SnipeOS YaCy installer added, properly and completely. It only removes what that installer put there. Nothing else on your system is touched.

Open a terminal and run one command

  1. Open the Snipe start menu (bottom-left).
  2. Go to System Tools, or Favourites if you keep QTerminal pinned there.
  3. Open the terminal (QTerminal).
  4. Paste and run:
Terminal
curl -fsSL https://snipebrowser.com/os/uninstall-yacy.sh -o /tmp/uninstall-yacy.sh && sudo bash /tmp/uninstall-yacy.sh

When prompted, enter your user password and press Enter. You will not see any characters appear as you type (that is normal Linux behaviour, not a fault).

The script then shows exactly what it is about to remove and asks you to confirm before doing anything. Type y and press Enter to proceed, or anything else to abort safely.

What the script removes

Once confirmed, the script works through five steps:

  1. Stops and disables the YaCy systemd service, and clears any leftover YaCy processes
  2. Stops nginx and the certbot timer, removes the YaCy nginx site, and deletes the Let's Encrypt certificate for that domain if one was created
  3. Purges nginx, certbot, python3-certbot-nginx, and related leftover packages, then runs autoremove for orphaned dependencies
  4. Deletes the /home/yacy directory and removes the yacy and yacydm user accounts
  5. Confirms completion

Built on Lubuntu 26.04 LTS. Security and archive support through April 2029.

What the script does not remove

  • Java and OpenJDK stay in place (other applications may need them)
  • wget stays
  • All SnipeOS branding and system packages are untouched

If you installed Java separately with the Java install script and want that gone too, that is a separate step.

SnipeOS only (do not run elsewhere)

Important: This script is for SnipeOS only. Do not run it on vanilla Ubuntu, standard Lubuntu, or any other distribution.

Running it on a non-SnipeOS install could damage that system.

Not sure what you are running? Open a terminal and run fastfetch (SnipeOS identifies itself there).