Re: How to disk cleanup after apt-get upgrade/install/remove cycles?

[Andreas Janssen <andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com>]

Hello

Ramasubramanian Ramesh (<rramesh@ti.com>) wrote:

>  Often one is not sure of the choices and strength of
>  packages/utilities and tend to install
> multiple utilies for the same purpose. For example I have about 3 or 4
> cd players and assortment of mp3 palyers etc. Sooner or later you see
> that a lot of left over packages exists in your system that you no
> longer use.
> 
> I am wondering if there is a fool-proof way of cleaning up that
> eliminates all unused packages. Specifically, if I installed package A
> that brought in packages B C and D due dependencies. Is there a way to
> find out that B C and D are no longer in the dependency list of any
> packages after removal of say A. This will allow me to systematically
> remove all unwanted packages.

Try deborphan and debfoster. But keep in mind that they show you
packages that are not needed by other packages. This does not mean they
are not needed by you. Be careful what you remove, especially of you
tell deborphan to not only show libraries:

andreas@sirius:~$ deborphan -a | grep kernel
main/misc                kernel-package
main/base                kernel-image-2.4.18-bf2.4
main/base                kernel-image-2.4.24-custom

best regards
        Andreas Janssen

-- 
Andreas Janssen
andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com
PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC801674
Registered Linux User #267976