Re: Bug#160743: apt: apt-get clean should run weekly
Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@debian.org> writes:
> Well, this is really up to the person running the machine. Many
> people would yell loudly at me if their cache directory was purged
> without their asking.
I agree that it should be up to the admin. It would probably make
sense to have a configuration option. Something like:
apt_cache_clean [ "on" | "off" ]
apt_cache_days [ number of days ]
> Less experianced people will use APT from within dselect where asks
> to do a clean after successfull installation.
I don't think it's that common. I tell people to use "apt-get". That
seems like standard advice now. I never see anyone recommend dselect
on #debian.
> The autoclean command does something similar. For this kind of data
> age isn't really a factor, either you want to keep the packages for
> some reason or you don't.
Perhaps it wasn't clear that I meant "age since download" rather than
"age since package changed"? autoclean doesn't do the same thing
since it only deletes old packages that can't be downloaded and
package turnover is not that high on "stable". Most of the packages I
just deleted on this other system were still up-to-date.
I don't find that to be case. I often use the package cache for the
first day or two a package is installed. Sometimes, I find it
necessary to reinstall a package. Or sometimes, I remove a package
shortly after installing it, try another package, then change my mind
and reinstall the original package. But, leaving every package around
for a long period of time just makes my backups larger (and came close
to filling up /var on this other system). I usually only need
packages within the first few days, so an expiry would be useful. (If
it was a cron job, you could just use use find -mtime.)
Anyway, it does not seem to be a good default to let the apt cache
grow without bound. Other caches and variable data stores that become
larger over time have default clean-up cron jobs (like man-db and
/var/log).
Dan
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