Re: freeing up some space
On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 01:25:27PM -0500, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> So I'm poking around with mc, and happened across /var/cache/apt/archives which has a LOT of *.deb files in it, and which seems to include many versions of the same package, some of them many years old, going all the way back to 2013. I guess I've been running debian a little longer than I'd thought...
>
> Is it okay to just delete older versions of these files? Or should I be doing something using one of the package management tools? I've mostly used synaptic, but am also aware of apt-get, apt, aptitude, and am not real clear on their comparative capabilities.
>
apt-get clean is a fairly useful command.
The original suggestion when you started the upgrade process was to
do this in several steps but without spending days between and also
running apt-get autoremove between each step.
Synaptic is a graphical front end: behind that are tools like apt-get /
aptitude/ apt
which are the command line tools.
Below that is dpkg - below that is manual editing of the package database
and files which is really only recommended as a very last resort when
your system is broken to a severe extent.
> I'm looking at over 7500 files amounting to over 9.5GB.
>
> I also see /var/cache/dictionaries-common, which appears to be tied to a spelling checker, which I don't use here. And /var/cache/samba, which I also don't use -- there isn't a windoze machine around here at all.
>
> What's the best way to get all of this excess stuff out of the system?
>
If you remove the package that created the cache, then there are also
purge commands to remove configuration files and other directories: if
these can't remove all files, they will normally throw up a warning
saying why not.
All best, as ever,
Andy Cater
>
> --
> Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
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> -
> Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
> M Dakin
>
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