HOWTO: Cleaning up all those unnecessary junk files...

[fetisha]

Very useful. Thanks for all the tips.

[Exonimus]

Great tutorial! I removed over 250 packages with the first command =) I was busy selecting them all until I realized I could, of course, just use the shift key and do it all in two clicks..
Also freed another 100mb of space.. not bad. not bad at all!
Also, the system feel more responsive somehow

[Aliby]

something wrong with my dapper 6.06...

i cant use apt-get autoremove

apt-get autoremove
E: Invalid operation autoremove

Firstly you need sudo permision and the package you want to remove (uninstall)

Note:
This is to remove a package AND all the packages it is dependant on (if they are not used anymore). eg.

sudo apt-get autoremove winedev

will also remove the following if they are not needed else where.

• wine
• libc6-dev

You may be wanting (note the addition of sudo)

sudo apt-get autoclean

This removes all the packages downloaded in the archive that are no longer in the repository lists (i.e they're gone or there is a newer version)

[Aliby]

I think this is the same thing as the gui method for clearing the old .deb packages out of synatic. I use it often.

sudo rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb

This is basically the same as the following:

sudo apt-get clean

Except that in the latter case apt knows

• where the configured archives folder is (it may not be the default linux location)
• the files are now gone. In any case it will simply download them again if necessary.

[Aliby]

Does anyone know how the "Temporary Files" settings under Synaptic | Settings | Preferences work?


Screen shot of the "Synaptic | Preferences"

I was hoping that it automates the "cleaning" processes in varying degrees:

1. "Does Nothing"

2. sudo apt-get clean

3. sudo apt-get autoclean

However, I don't know how to "trigger" the action?

[Aliby]

Better AutoClean

Another "valuable to me" trick I found was to remove the "CD-Rom/DVD" repositories from the sources lists before doing:

sudo apt-get autoclean

You can do it by unticking them in Synaptic

autoclean seems to look at what is in the package lists and delete was is not there and the CD's often have old versions.

I then "check" them again to add these repos so I don't have to download anything that current and is on them already.

I have posted it as a "Wishlist" in Launchpad
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...pt/+bug/200536

I actually can't think of a reason to keep ANY packages in the archive that are listed on a CD-ROM/DVD repository?

It would be great to have the default, or an option/ flag, to ignore CD-ROM/DVD repositories when performing "apt-get autoclean"

WHY?
1. I autoclean to keep delete old packages to reduce storage space
2. These packages are available on the CD anyway (I don't have to keep them on the hard drive)
3. It seems apt-get sees the "old" files in the CD-ROM lists thus does not delete them.
4. Most of the time online REPOS are also included, which have the latest packages listed anyway. (One option would be to ingore the CD-ROM repos, unless they are the only repos?)

I thought it would delete ALL old versions, but it deletes unlisted versions. So I currently achieve the above by:
* Temporarily removing the "CD-ROM/DVD" repositories from the lists
* Then doing a "apt-get autoclean". Older versions are now deleted from the archive (they no longer appear in active package lists)
* Adding the "CD-ROM/DVD" repositories again so new installs can access these packages if they are the latest versions and doesn't need to download them - saving bandwidth.

------------
Ubuntu-Studio 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071015)
apt 0.7.6ubuntu14 0

We'll see whether anything comes of it

[takmsdsm]

Well. this program has officially pissed me off. I ran it, it found a couple orphaned files ~40ish. I have it clean out the files. Not only did it clean out those files, it also cleaned out and deleted conky, figlet, a couple of my games, envy, and a couple other programs that i didnt tell it to do.


hell, conky was even running at the time!

:unamused:

the best part? it deleted its own GUI out when it was all finished.

[juky]

Thanks for this HOWTO, everything went fine with me!

[nebu]

thnx a lot..... a very helpful howto...

[cor2y]

Thank you for the Helpful how to