Reducing the size of apt-caches

[Robert Buchholz <rob@thetruth.de>]

Hi,

I wonder how the size of the apt-cache is reduced in the original KNOPPIX?

$ ls -lah /var/cache/apt
...
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 863K  2. Jun 13:21 pkgcache.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  52K  2. Jun 13:21 srcpkgcache.bin

After extracting the 5.0.1 knoppix for remastering and installing one
package (!), the files have grown pretty much:

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  13M 2006-09-06 22:36 pkgcache.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  13M 2006-09-06 22:31 srcpkgcache.bin

Is there a safe way to reduce them back into a region where the original
files were?

( I did try apt-cache regen but that did not lead anywhere. )

Thanks in advance,

Robert