Re: How to disk cleanup after apt-get upgrade/install/remove cycles?
On 2004-01-14, Ramasubramanian Ramesh penned:
> All,
>
> 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.
>
> My naive approach now is
>
> 1. do a get-selection to see installed packages 2. mark the ones
> that you do not need 3. try apt-get -s remove them to see if any
> thing else gets removed. 4. Based on above output prune the list
> down so that step 3 produces expected results. 5. Go ahead with
> the actual removal
>
> Are there any better methods? In particular is there a method to
> draw/list a directed graph of dependencies of pacages in the current
> debian installation? (or for that matter, do the dependencies form a
> digraph?)
>
If you use aptitude, it automatically tracks dependencies and uninstalls
them when you uninstall the primary package. This saved my bacon a few
weeks ago, when a package "suggested" the whole X environment and I
accidentally installed it all ... ugh!
There's also a tool called deborphan:
deborphan finds packages that have no packages depending on them. The
default operation is to search only within the libs and oldlibs sec-
tions to hunt down unused libraries.
--
monique
Reply to: