cleaning up my system of unneeded packages with apt-get
 

I have only just installed debian but im guessing after a while of installing and remove packages you end up with a few packages that are no longer needed at the present time because nothing depends on them. I was wondering if apt-get has anyway of cleaning up the system of unneeded libraries etc. Also is it safe to do?

Thanks in advance

Michael

Read the APT Howto, specifically section 3.6.

thanks for that, i had already read about that cleaning out the chached .deb files. Im more meaning files that are actually still installed, for example say libfoofoofoo was not used by anything and nothing was dependent on it, is there any command I can issue that will clean my system out of these types of files, or is it worth keeping them on anyway?

Thanks again

Michael

deborphan ...

is deborphan safe, or can it some times detect libraries that you want but that were not part of the actual dependencies of any program you have installed e.g. gstreamer-lame

"localepurge" is another good program for cleaning out unused files on your system.

Just curious...

Why would you want to do that? I agree, it gives a nice cleaned up feeling, but it cannot concern more than tens or maybe a couple of hundred MBytes of disk space. (At with the current price per MB of hard disk space...)

Linux is not like *doze where more installed programs slow down the performance. (registry is cluttered, anti-virus searches bring the machine's performance to its knees...) If your program is not started in rc.S or rcn.d it really doesn't do anyhthing except taling up some space.

Actually, I stopped doing this a long time ago already unless I have to clone the installation to a disk < 4 GB. (Is there anyone elso out there using disks this small???)

Or are you afraid of future unnecessary dependency problems? If that is likely to happen, then it makes sense to purge orphaned packages. Dependency Hell is my only concern with Debian

jlinkels

I agree that for most it is probably not anything to be too concerned about, but many just like to have their systems lean and only containing what they need. Also, I suppose there are some of us as you said still using ancient drives that may be able to free up enough to make it worthwhile (I currently have sarge on an old pc with a 2gb drive.)

I had been looking for something similar to deborphan for awhile now, thanks for the tip.

I'm using deborphan on stable for a long time and never had a problem.

On the other side, I have an sid debian on which from time to time deborphan has removed things that were needed. On this (bit broken) system I'm chaning a lot dependencies for test purpose so it's maybe related.

So my answer is no , it doesn't seem 100% safe in every case. Make some tests and see.
In any case you have a log in /var/log/dpkg.log to see what was uninstalled...

I know having unused libraries doesnt cause any problems or slow down, i was just wanting to have a clean system with only bits I need installed. So far deb orphan is working ok. I just isse the deborphan command then use synaptic to look at thedesriptions of the the package does. AT present its only wanting to remove on package gstreamer-lame but nothing is dependent on that in my system so im guessing that why its shwing up.

Im not upgrading from sid just etch.

I think there is the same in aptitude, can't remember where, in the menus somewhere hidden :)

There is also debfoster, but I still stick with deborphan

gtkorphan is a gui front-end for deborphan.