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Re: dpkg status history...how much is too much?



montefin <montefin@finux.com> wrote:
>So I did du -k /var/lib/dpkg and got:
>
>total 10762
[...]
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       870741 May 17 03:04 status
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       870740 May 17 03:03 status-old
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       870741 May 17 03:04 status.yesterday.0
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       207236 May 15 23:59
>status.yesterday.1.gz
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       206679 May 14 01:42
>status.yesterday.2.gz
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       205638 May 13 20:57
>status.yesterday.3.gz
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       205079 May  7 17:53
>status.yesterday.4.gz
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       204288 May  7 01:03
>status.yesterday.5.gz
>-rw-r--r--    1 root   root       203151 May  5 13:18
>status.yesterday.6.gz
>drwxr-xr-x    2 root   root         1024 May 17 03:04 updates
>
>Does dpkg need all that status history? And if not, must I monitor it
>myself, or does dpkg have a self-cleansing method that is somehow not
>being invoked here?

/etc/cron.daily/standard does the log rotation here; you could decrease
the number 7 in the relevant 'savelog' line, though at the expense of
having to put up with being asked if you want to replace that script
every time you upgrade cron. (Hmm, it really ought to use logrotate
instead ...)

I'd advise you to keep some status history around; dpkg doesn't need it,
but it always seems to be right after I delete something like that that
*I* need it. If you find a week's worth excessive, though, then go ahead
and turn the setting down.

available-old and status-old are created by dpkg when updating its
database; I doubt you can do very much about that.

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]



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