I tend to install a lot of stuff on my Ubuntu machines. Much of this I do for curiosity and then report it here. This means that not only do I get to check out lots of interesting stuff, but my machines also start getting cluttered with stale files, old versions and orphaned files.
Here are two quick ways to help clean up your system.
First, you can use a built in apt-get feature called autoclean. Open a terminal session and type:
sudo apt-get autoclean
This will rid your system of partial packages and mucked up .deb downloads and can free up a suprising amount of space.
Another great tool is a package called Deborphan. You can either install this through Synaptic or again in a terminal session type:
sudo apt-get install deborphan
Once it’s installed, you can run it to list all of your orphaned packages. Think of them as packages that no longer serve a purpose and are not needed or used on your machine. Once you get a list, you can use apt-get to remove them.
sudo deborphan | xargs sudo apt-get -y remove –purge
Now you’ve saved yourself some space.
Technorati Tags: clean computer, debian, ubuntu, linux, apt-get, scrubbing bubbles
November 16th, 2006 at 7:47 am
I think ‘orphaner’(a frontend to deborphan) its a neat way of getting rid of uneeded packages.
Cheers
–arky
November 16th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Thanks. Do have a look at Deleting Unwanted Files too.
November 16th, 2006 at 10:00 am
I use “debfoster” to manage my packages
November 16th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Had to turn on caching due to the digg effect, so new comments may take 12 minutes to show up.
November 16th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
instead of apt-get I use aptitude. and when I want to remove something I just type:
sudo aptitude --purge-unused purge somethingNovember 16th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
That’s a fine method Elvis, thank you very much. Deborphan however clearly picks out orphaned packages for you, so that you can leave one more task to your computer before it finds Sarah Conner.
November 16th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
I deal with orphaned packages, I have deporphan & wajig installed. wajig is a fantastic alternate commandline program to agt-* and dpkg. It can even handle sudo for you if the command you’re running requires it and you forgot to issue it in the command.
Anyway, once I’ve got that, its just
wajig remove-orphansNovember 17th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Hi Daveg,
Wajig sounds like a great package. I’ve just installed it and will be mucking about with it today.