On Tue 11 Jan 2022 at 23:11:21 (+0000), Brian wrote: > On Tue 11 Jan 2022 at 19:58:55 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > > 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. > > Indeed it it is. But what useful function does it perform on a default > installation? Some users appear to think that downloaded and installed > packages are preserved in /vat/cache/apt/archives until they are cleared > out. They are not.
Eh? ~# ls -l /var/cache/apt/archives/ total 4 -rw-r----- 1 root root 0 Dec 12 21:09 lock drwx------ 2 _apt root 4096 Dec 29 17:43 partial ~# apt-get -o Acquire::http::Proxy="http://192.168.1.14:3142/"; install iwd Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: iwd 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 561 kB of archives. After this operation, 2232 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye/main amd64 iwd amd64 1.14-3 [561 kB] Fetched 561 kB in 0s (3079 kB/s) Retrieving bug reports... Done Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done Selecting previously unselected package iwd. (Reading database ... 347571 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../archives/iwd_1.14-3_amd64.deb ... Unpacking iwd (1.14-3) ... Setting up iwd (1.14-3) ... Processing triggers for dbus (1.12.20-2) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.4-2) ... Scanning processes... Scanning processor microcode... Scanning linux images... Running kernel seems to be up-to-date. The processor microcode seems to be up-to-date. No services need to be restarted. No containers need to be restarted. No user sessions are running outdated binaries. ~# ls -l /var/cache/apt/archives/ total 556 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 561296 May 6 2021 iwd_1.14-3_amd64.deb -rw-r----- 1 root root 0 Dec 12 21:09 lock drwx------ 2 _apt root 4096 Jan 11 17:18 partial ~# That's why my routine upgrade command is: # apt-get -o Acquire::http::Proxy="http://192.168.1.14:3142/"; update && apt-get -d -o Acquire::http::Proxy="http://192.168.1.14:3142/"; upgrade; apt-get upgrade; read -p 'Ctrl-C to avoid clean' _; apt-get clean Cheers, David.
