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Re: aptitude's default caching behavior



On Sun, 2007-04-15 at 11:50 -0400, Patrick Wiseman wrote:
> Hello:
> 
> By default, aptitude keeps everything it downloads
> in /var/cache/apt/archive.  I had 43 versions of zsh, taking up 87M!
> Before invoking the Clean Cache action in aptitude, df -h gave me
> this:
> 
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on 
> /dev/hda1              28G   17G  9.7G  63% /
> 
> After cleaning the cache, df -h returned this:
> 
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda1              28G  6.4G   20G  25% /
> 
> Obviously, I hadn't ever cleaned out the cache!  (I was unaware of the
> default behavior.)  The default behavior seems to me to be
> ill-advised, but, in any event, it can be changed, by going to
> Options, Miscellaneous and checking the box to remove obsolete
> packages after downloading new package lists.  Then, presumably,
> aptitude will keep only current packages in the archive. 
> 
> I hope this information will be of use to someone else (but maybe I
> was just ignorant!).

Many people are bitten by this "bug" which is not a bug.

It is the default behavior in terms of "saving your bacon" with a bad
package upgrade.

Me? to avoid this problem I use "cron-apt" I have it update once a day,
download any package replacements, then does an "apt-get auto-clean", it
removes any previous versions.

Just make sure you understand what you are doing if you place an
automated function to do this. It can bite you HARD, but in general it
doesn't. You just need to watch out for bugs in "current" versions
before you replace things.
-- 
greg, greg@gregfolkert.net

Novell's Directory Services is a competitive product to Microsoft's
Active Directory in much the same way that the Saturn V is a competitive
product to those dinky little model rockets that kids light off down at
the playfield. -- Thane Walkup

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