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I think once we get the packages with apt-get it stores in /var/cache/apt/archives . Is it safe to remove the archives files to save space? Can we remove other files as well to save some space?

Jorge Castro
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Prabesh Shrestha
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6 Answers6

110

I think it's safe to remove the archives files. So if you want to free up disk space this are my recommendations:

To delete downloaded packages (.deb) already installed (and no longer needed)

sudo apt-get clean

To remove all stored archives in your cache for packages that can not be downloaded anymore (thus packages that are no longer in the repository or that have a newer version in the repository).

sudo apt-get autoclean

To remove unnecessary packages (After uninstalling an app there could be packages you don't need anymore).

sudo apt-get autoremove

To delete old kernel versions

sudo apt-get remove --purge linux-image-X.X.XX-XX-generic

If you don't know which kernel version to remove

dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-image

Source: Limpiando Ubuntu: comandos y programas (actualización) & How do I free up disk space?

Iman Mohamadi
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DrKenobi
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11

Yes, it is generally safe to remove them, unless you had a bad Internet connection and you needed to reinstall certain packages.

To remove them, open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get clean

You can also use Ubuntu-tweak and Bleachbit.

Reda Lazri
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6

And related at the clean cache... you can use this command

sudo dpkg --purge `COLUMNS=300 dpkg -l "*" | egrep "^rc" | cut -d\  -f3`

in order to delete all configuration related to unistalled program.

And:

1) localepurge: for delete localizazion packages not interested for you

2) deporphan and his gnome interface gtkorphan.

peppe84
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0

According to this : http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/28502/how-to-free-up-a-lot-of-disk-space-on-ubuntu-linux-by-deleting-cached-package-files/ there is an option to disable caching in synaptic package manager...

Does anyone know where is the configuration being defined? (no where in /etc/apt/ as far as I can tell)

bruno.braga
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You can run 'sudo apt-get clean' to clean out any cached .debs. If they're needed, they will be downloaded again. There's also a program called computer-janitor to help with removing old files.

micahg
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0

If you messed around with installing partial packages then "apt-get autoclean" removes them too.

I run a Cron job to do this on some systems backed up to the Cloud to keep file sizes down.

HTH,

JR

Jonathan Ross
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