Re: unsed .deb packages??

[Marc Shapiro <mshapiro_42@yahoo.com>]

Andrew Reid wrote:
> On Friday 16 November 2007 22:02, David Fox wrote:
>   
> > On 11/16/07, Andrew Sackville-West <andrew@farwestbilliards.com> wrote:
> >     
> > > I think OP is looking for aptitude clean or auto-clean. Check the man
> > > page. It will remove debs that aren't current. or something like that.
> > >       
> > Actually, all that does is to remove either all (clean) or selected
> > (auto-clean) - selected in the sense that they're debs no longer
> > available. But it removes the debian packages in
> > /var/cache/apt/archives, not the actual packages themselves.
> >     
>
> [Common scenario elided]
>
>   I wonder if "deborphan" meets the OP's need?  It's a utility
> that identifies "left over" packages that no other packages
> depend on.  Library packages that meet this description are
> probably left-overs and can be removed.
>
>   See <http://packages.debian.org/etch/deborphan> for more details.
>
> 				-- A.
>   
Perhaps the OP is referring to .deb packages accumulating in 
/var/cache/apt/archives.  After many upgrades and dist-upgrades there 
will be quite a few old versions of many .deb files that build up.  
Also, uninstalled packages still leave their .deb files in the 
archives.  I wrote a program a while back (in Python) which handles this 
for me, giving statistics on how many package .deb files exist which are 
not installed, or are duplicated in the archives.  It then gives options 
for deleting them with, or without prompting.  I don't know of any 
packaged program that does this, however.  That's why I wrote my own.  
This is what the program shows when it is started up:

----------------------------------------
CleanApt v0.4.0 - an apt cache cleaner

Total installed packages:    743   Total uninstalled packages in 
archive:   23
Total packages in archive:   765   Total files in 
archive:                 843
Packages in archive w/dups:   59   Files in archive in dup 
pkgs:           137


Delete uninstalled packages from archive (y/N/p/q)? y
----------------------------------------

Running the program with -d will automatically remove dup deb files 
leaving only the one with the most recent date.  Using -h will, of 
course, give a few screens of help on options and usage.

--
Marc Shapiro
mshapiro_42@yahoo.com