On Ma, 11 ian 22, 16:32:20, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: > On Tuesday 11 January 2022 02:25:47 pm Cindy Sue Causey wrote: > > On 1/11/22, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. <roy@rtellason.com> 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? > > Apparently the info about what's in this directory is also stored in > some database somewhere, so just going in there and deleting a bunch > of stuff will probably break something... [citation needed] > Somebody (maybe more than one somebody) suggested a "clean" option, > but apparently that will get rid of *ALL* of those files. I'd kinda > prefer to keep the most recent of any of them that are still being > used. In perusing the docs for aptitude, I see that there's an > option in there to "clean obsolete files", which sounds like it'll do > just that. I don't see such an option in apt-get, or elsewhere (so > far). The manpage for apt-get just doesn't refere to them as "obsolete" but "largely useless"[1]. Regarding aptitude, you might want to take note of the difference between "obsolete files" and "obsolete packages". Both are interesting for your needs, especially after a dist/full-upgrade. [1] just because a package can't be downloaded anymore from any /configured/ repository doesn't actually mean it's useless or obsolete. Kind regards, Andrei -- http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
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