Re: Cleaning /var/lib/dpkg/available

[George Danchev <danchev@spnet.net>]

On Wednesday 14 June 2006 14:34, Jérôme Warnier wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 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?

In case you are interested to clear your /var/lib/dpkg/status, here is what I 
use sometimes. For instance, if you want to purge package section with 
'Status: purge ok not-installed', ./this_script > /tmp/status.cleated, and 
then see what have been removed from it diff'ing against your 
current /var/lib/dpkg/status. Remember to make a backup before actually 
replacing the file ;-)


#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

my $filename='/var/lib/dpkg/status';

open FILE, $filename or
die "Failed to open $filename\n";

while (my $line=<FILE>) {

    chomp($line);
    my @section=();

    while ($line ne "") {
        push(@section,$line);
        $line=<FILE>;
        chomp($line);
    }

    if ($section[1] ne 'Status: purge ok not-installed') {

        foreach (@section) {
            $_ = $_ . "\n";
            print;
        }

        print"\n";
    }
}

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