Re: freeing up some space
On Tue 11 Jan 2022 at 13:25:27 (-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.
>
> 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?
Three months ago, you were happy with 150GB of free space, so even
saving as much as 9GB by autoclean-ing /var/cache/apt/archives isn't
going to make a great deal of difference.
And now you want to aimlessly zap a few more directories for no better
reason than the fact that they look unused. Well, take a look at
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/10/msg00308.html
where I measured how much disk space I might reclaim by purging all
the non-English localization files on the system: a measly 358MB.
Is it worth the hassle and potential future trouble. I was under the
impression that you wanted to get your out-of-date system in order,
ready for the next upgrade step. Why would you want to prejudice the
smooth running of your upgrade path just for a few hundred MB.
Cheers,
David.
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