Hi, I did an ls on the directory /var/lib/dpkg:

and I saw some files like available-old, diversions-old, status-old and statoverride-old.

I was looking to free up some space on my hard drive so I was thinking if it is safe to delete these files?

Thanks

On my system, these files were updated recently, and both file and file-old are the same size and probably equal.

I would not mess with it, one mistake and you have precluded any future maintenance using the packaging system. The size of those files is not worth it.

If you want to save space, use "apt-get clean". It will delete old .deb files in a safe way. That space saving is much more significant.

jlinkels

Don't delete those files if the dpkg/apt database every gets messed up then you will need them to restore from the backups. In addition to the clean option mentioned install localepurge and tell it to get the man pages as well as the locales you do not need. Also installing/running deborphan and debfoster to get rid of packages that have been installed but are no longer needed plus if the machine is not on very early in the morning (around 04:30 IIRC) then install anacron so that your cron jobs will be run to rotate then delete the log files as necessary.

Thanks HappyTux. Actually I have already done all the things that you mentioned i.e. localepurge,orphaner, apt-get clean,etc and then when I still needed some space, I thought how about if I delete those file as they seem to give 20-25MB of free space.

Also, do these files get generated automatically? Suppose, if I remove them will they be re-generated again after some point of time?

Is there any other thing that I can remove?

Thanks