[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Cleaning /var/lib/dpkg/available



On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 02:03:21PM +0200, Daniel Kobras wrote:
>On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 01:34:36PM +0200, Jérôme Warnier wrote:
>> I've been upgrading my machines since Woody to Sarge, then to Etch. Now,
>> my /var/lib/dpkg/available are huge (15MB), and it seems they never get
>> cleaned.
>> How am I supposed to clean them? Isn't there any automated tools in
>> Debian to do that?
>
>Try 'dpkg --forget-old-unavail'.

That option --forget-old-unavail clears entries from
/var/lib/dpkg/status for uninstalled packages which aren't in available.

The available file contains all the currently available packages and
should not require cleaning.

This file gets updated by dselect's update option, which for a backend
of apt is basically "apt-cache dumpavail".  So on my ppc (unstable):

  $ apt-cache dumpavail | wc -c
  16944732
  $ apt-cache dumpavail | grep -c ^Package:
  18183

I end up with an available file of roughly 17M containing 18 thousand
odd packages.  This is normal.

--bod



Reply to: