Re: What is the apt cache good for?
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 05:34:59PM +0000, Hendrik Boom <hendrik@topoi.pooq.com> was heard to say:
> I can get some space back by doing apt-get autoclean.
>
> I can get more back by apt-get clean.
>
> This deletes lots and lots of files from my system. Judging from du's
> output, /var/cache/apt/ takes a bit more than a third of my disk space.
>
> Now I've been keeping these files around, just in case.
>
> But do I actually need any of these files? Or are they only needed while
> I'm actually busy installing stuff? After those packages have been
> installed, are the corresponding files in the cache good for anything at
> all? Perhaps for deleting the packages later?
>
> (By the way, I use aptitude)
Most of that space is stored in /var/cache/apt/archives. The rest of
/var/cache/apt can be deleted but it'll be recreated next time you run
apt; it's a binary cache of data that's used to speed apt up.
I think it's mostly a holdover from when Internet connections were
much slower than they are today. apt keeps all the .debs it downloads
in /var/cache/apt/archives, so that if you decide to remove some
software and then want to re-install it later, you don't have to
download it a second time. It's useful for some purposes (e.g., you can
copy those files to another machine rather than downloading them twice),
but it also tends to clog people's /var partitions.
You can delete all the downloaded .deb files by running "aptitude clean".
Daniel
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