Uninstall and Clean Up

This page deletes VMs and local data. Inspect the current state and stop if any Barn VM must remain:

barn st

1. Remove the deployment

Delete nodes, persistent disks, keys, and deployment state:

barn purge

This whole-deployment command asks for no confirmation. The image cache and host network remain. Use the granular, confirmed barn destroy command instead when preserving persistent disks or removing selected nodes.

2. Remove optional integrations

Whole-deployment destroy already removes the default barn SSH integration. If you installed a custom fragment name or /etc/hosts entries:

barn ssh-config --remove --name lab
barn hosts uninstall --json
barn hosts uninstall --yes

Without --yes, the --json command only shows the marker-owned plan. Apply the --yes command after checking its target. In Barn 0.9.0, ordinary terminal output asks [y/N] and applies removal after confirmation. Barn reads the hosts plan without sudo; applying the change still needs privilege.

3. Remove cached images

barn image prune --dry-run
barn image prune --yes

Prune removes unreferenced cached images and stale staging files. It protects images referenced by deployment state, the active Catalog, and registered local aliases, so it is not a complete cache wipe. The optional final state-directory cleanup below removes the remaining cache too.

4. Uninstall host networking

barn network uninstall --json
barn network uninstall --yes

The first JSON command only shows the owned removal plan, although sudo may be needed to read protected network state. Uninstall refuses while any VM remains attached. The network is shared across users; removing your deployment does not establish that another user’s VMs have stopped.

5. Clean up a source setup

Network uninstall preserves the independently useful hosts helper. Only after confirming Barn is no longer needed, remove these exact paths:

sudo rm -f -- /opt/barn/libexec/barn-hosts-helper
sudo rmdir /opt/barn/libexec /opt/barn

With the default state directory, and only after every earlier step succeeds, remove the remaining state:

(
  set -eu
  test -z "${BARN_HOME:-}"
  barn_state_root="$(cd "$HOME" && pwd -P)/.barn"
  test ! -L "$barn_state_root"
  if test -d "$barn_state_root"; then
    printf 'removing exact state root: %s\n' "$barn_state_root"
    find "$barn_state_root" -depth -delete
  fi
)

This snippet stops if BARN_HOME is set or the default path is a symlink. Review a custom state directory separately; never substitute $HOME, /, a workspace root, or an unverified path. After deletion, avoid running lifecycle commands just to check that the directory is gone: they may recreate lock directories.

QEMU may be shared by other tools, so keep it by default. On macOS, remove it only when nothing else needs it:

brew uninstall qemu

Verify network removal and the default state directory:

barn network status --json
test ! -e "$HOME/.barn" && echo 'no Barn state'

An uninstalled network is expected to report an absent/not-ready finding; inspect the result rather than requiring a zero exit code. Do not use bridge100 disappearing as proof: macOS chooses its bridge name and may use other vmnet bridges for unrelated software.

Remove an Archive, Homebrew, DEB, or RPM binary through its installation channel. The bin/ directory from a source build is only a checkout artifact, separate from the host state above.