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Re: freeing up some space

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On 11.01.22 19:25, 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.
> 
> 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?
> 
> 
Just to give you some more inspiration about where else old stuff could 
have accumulated:
For the case that you would work with programming languages, then 
consider to check if they carry old ballast which you do not want to 
keep. For Python it could be cleaned off old ballast with the "clean" 
function of "conda", if you managed your python with conda, and for 
Julia there is some "]gc" garbage collector, just to give some examples. 
Other software is likely to also have tools like this. The point is, 
these programming language environments maintain their local stock of 
downloaded versioned packages similar like Debian is maintaining its 
packages, and you might also find there a significant amount of no more 
needed stuff.
I agree, cleaning tasks produce headaches, but if you are in need to 
free space, then you might need to go for it. You could always consider 
to have a nice backup in some offline storage before deleting stuff, so 
that you could copy it back into place if cleaned too much.
Another tip: the CLI tool "ncdu" can be helpful to localize where stuff 
accumulated.

Good luck!
Marco

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Thread

freeing up some space "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2022-01-11 19:30 +0100
  Re: freeing up some space Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2022-01-11 20:00 +0100
  Re: freeing up some space Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2022-01-11 20:00 +0100
  Re: freeing up some space Cindy Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com> - 2022-01-11 20:30 +0100
    Re: freeing up some space David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-01-11 21:10 +0100
    Re: freeing up some space "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2022-01-11 22:40 +0100
      Re: freeing up some space "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2022-01-11 22:50 +0100
      Re: freeing up some space Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2022-01-15 17:00 +0100
  Re: freeing up some space "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2022-01-11 21:10 +0100
    Re: freeing up some space Kent West <westk@acu.edu> - 2022-01-11 22:10 +0100
      Re: freeing up some space "c. marlow" <debian@cwm030.com> - 2022-01-11 23:20 +0100
        Re: freeing up some space "c. marlow" <debian@cwm030.com> - 2022-01-11 23:30 +0100
        Re: freeing up some space Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2022-01-11 23:40 +0100
    Re: freeing up some space Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2022-01-12 00:20 +0100
      Re: freeing up some space David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-01-12 00:30 +0100
      Re: freeing up some space Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-01-12 00:30 +0100
  Re: freeing up some space Marco Möller <talby@debianlists.mobilxpress.net> - 2022-01-11 23:10 +0100
    Re: freeing up some space Ralph Katz <ralph@ralphkatz.com> - 2022-01-12 04:20 +0100
  Re: freeing up some space David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2022-01-12 05:10 +0100
    Re: freeing up some space "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2022-01-12 17:00 +0100
  Re: freeing up some space David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-01-12 06:50 +0100
    Re: freeing up some space "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2022-01-12 17:10 +0100

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