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 > ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can > be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" > - > Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James > M Dakin >
