Uninstalled package but command remained usable as user (command not found with sudo)

Question

I recently installed silversearcher-ag with sudo and uninstalled it as it required sudo to run the command every single time.

The command I used to install and uninstall this package respectively:

# installation sudo apt install silversearcher-ag 

# uninstallation sudo apt remove silversearcher-ag sudo apt autoremove 

As mentioned by the comment, here's the output for type -a ag:

ag is aliased to `apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade' 

After uninstallation, I found that if I do sudo ag, the command would correctly fail due to command not found; however, if I simply do a ag as user, I was still able to run the command ( although the command actually failed due to lack of permission, i.e., it has to be run with sudo every single time).

I've looked at places like /usr/bin/, /usr/local/bin, /usr/sbin/, /usr/local/sbin, sbin/, bin/, the ag command didn't reside in any of them.

whereis, locate returned no matching results.

I've also tried

sudo apt purge silversearcher-agsudo apt purge silversearcher-ag*

The first command actually removed some additional affliations, the second simply removed none. After these two commands the ag was still there.

What do I need to do to completely remove this package?

I am running MX Linux 23-ahs, based on Debian 12 bookworm.

Answer 1

The best way to find what you are actually executing when you run a command is type -a. For example:

$ type -a ls ls is aliased to `ls --color=tty' ls is /sbin/ls ls is /usr/sbin/ls ls is /usr/bin/ls ls is /usr/bin/ls ls is /bin/ls ls is /sbin/ls ls is /bin/ls 

As you can see above, that finds the various ls executables I have (I'm running Arch, those are all symlinks to /usr/bin/ls), and also an alias. Chances are, you have some unrelated command or alias with that name and that's what you see running.

In your case, you had ag aliased to apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade, two commands that require root, hence the error about needing to run as root.