This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:

This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
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Title : Debian packages clean up commands
Author : Remy van Elst
Date : 01-01-2010
URL : https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Debian-apt-get-dpkg-packages-cleanup-commands.html
Format : Markdown/HTML
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As all my servers run on Debian and I like to keep things clean, here are some
handy commands.

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##### Find large packages

dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 | while read pkg; do dpkg -L $pkg | xargs -I'{}' bash -c 'if [ ! -d "{}" ]; then echo "{}"; fi' | tr '\n' '\000' | du -c --files0-from - | tail -1 | sed "s/total/$pkg/"; done | sort -rn > ~/packages.log.txt

If you run this as root, when its finished you will have a file in /root called
packages.log.txt which has all the packages from your system in it with the size
of the package and the files it uses:

15312 perl-modules
14192 php5-cgi
12588 perl
12400 coreutils
12396 iso-codes
11232 aptitude
10684 binutils
9916 python2.5

You can also use something like

dpkg-query -Wf '${Installed-Size}\t${Package}\n' | sort -n

but this also takes the size of databases and extra files.

##### Remove config files

If you uninstall stuff with apt-get remove sometimes debian does not removes
config files and they also take up space. Now you can just use apt-get purge but
I tend to forget that every time. This command lists all the packages which are
removed but still have config files on your system:

dpkg --list | grep '^rc '

rc binutils 2.20.1-15 The GNU assembler, linker and binary utilities
rc dbus 1.2.24-3 simple interprocess messaging system
rc dpkg-dev 1.15.8.5 Debian package development tools
rc erlang-base 1:14.a-dfsg-2 Erlang/OTP virtual machine and base applications
rc fakeroot 1.14.4-1 Gives a fake root environment

Now, just to make sure check the output and then remove the config files with
this command:

dpkg --list | grep '^rcb' | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs dpkg -P

##### Cleanup afterwards

To save up some space via apt get you can use these commands:

apt-get autoremove
apt-get clean

autoremove removes unused dependencies, packages which were installed by other
packeges but which are no longer needed by your system. clean just removes all
the packages in the apt cache. You can also use autoclean but clean frees up
more space. This command shows all the packages which are installed on your
system because some package recommends it, but they are not actually
dependencies of packages:

aptitude search '?and( ?automatic(?reverse-recommends(?installed)), ?not(?automatic(?reverse-depends(?installed))) )'

can give something like this:

i A apt-xapian-index - maintenance and search tools for a Xapian index of Debian packages
i A exim4 - metapackage to ease Exim MTA (v4) installation
i A file - Determines file type using "magic" numbers
i A heirloom-mailx - feature-rich BSD mail(1)

Check the output and if needed remove them all:

aptitude search '?and( ?automatic(?reverse-recommends(?installed)), ?not(?automatic(?reverse-depends(?installed))) )' | awk '{ print $3 }' | xargs dpkg -P

Here are some commands to sort files by size:

du -h | grep ^[0-9.]*M | sort -rn
du -h | grep ^[0-9.]*G | sort -rn

[1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212

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