Hints on keeping the system clean (was: Re: sytem running out of free disk space)
On Nov 15 2005, Jon Dowland wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 08:10:42PM +0100, Realos wrote:
> > well deborphan shows only three packages
>
> the package `debian-goodies' contains dpigs, a script which will give
> you the biggest installed packages. That should help you identify the
> priority packages to remove if you don't need them.
This very same thing can be accomplished with wajig, which I recommend.
After it is installed, it will give you a nice output when you type:
# wajig size
With all packages sorted by size. To get rid of packages that were
removed, but whose configuration files are still present, you may
consider using something like the following command:
# wajig size | grep config-files | cut -d " " -f 1 | xargs dpkg --purge
Actually, this subject of keeping systems clean is quite interesting
(even more for those with a Mathematical background). A good use of
deborphan is to use the following:
# apt-get --purge remove $(deborphan --guess-all | grep -v libc6-i686)
Be careful to inspect the output of deborphan --guess-all before running
the command above.
Another hint to keep systems minimal is to use the package debfoster,
just to see what is "cloging" your system.
And yet another hint would be to use the package cruft (this one is one
of my favourites). It screams about any file that is not owned by a
properly installed package.
And yet another hint would be to manually go into the ncurses version of
aptitude, mark the packages that it might want to delete as manually
installed (with "+"), then, carefully go through your list of packages,
marking them as automatically installed (with "M").
To avoid aptitude fighting with apt-get, you may want to disable
aptitude's feature of installing recommended packages by default.
And, as a last tip, make sure that you don't forget about "apt-get
autoclean" and "apt-get clean".
If you know of any other hints to save space, please, let me know.
Hope this helps, Rogério Brito.
P.S.: I like to keep my systems with a good balance between needed
packages and those that are handy because it makes backups much easier
(for instance, I can backup my computer with mondoarchive with just one
CD).
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@ime.usp.br : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito
Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de
Homepage on freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/
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