Dist-upgrade from Stretch to Buster

[fred44nl]

so, I made a backup, edited /etc/apt/sources.list and than I ran:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo reboot now
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo reboot now
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt clean
sudo aptitude search '~i(!~ODebian)' - this gave me about 30 packages, which I removed

before the upgrade, I had 872 packages installed
now I have 1130 packages, which is 258 more than before.
also my footprint is about 1 GB more.

is this as expected ??
is there something, I can do about this ??

[Ardouos]

It depends if you have any external repos or packages installed.

I would check your apt/history.log as it does tell you when new packages get installed or old packages get removed.

[fred44nl]

when I do

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sudo aptitude search '~S ~i !~ODebian !~o'

I get this

i par2-tbb - multithreaded PAR 2.0 compatible file verification and
i plexmediaserver - Plex organizes all of your personal media so you can ea
i A python-sabyenc - yEnc extension for Python, optimized for Usenet
i sabnzbdplus - web-based binary newsreader with nzb support

which is correct, as I installed both plex and sabnzb myself

[Ardouos]

I have not used aptitude, I used apt-forktracer to discover what foreign packages needed removing. Apt-forktracer did bring up some packages that were from official repos...The man page it does mention:

apt-forktracer analyzes each installed package separately, reporting on the standard output these packages which are in a "non-standard" state. What "non-standard" means depends on the mode of program operation:

default (non-verbose) mode
this state means packages in an incorrect state (e.g. no candidate version) or packages whose candidate version is different than the newest available official version.
verbose mode
this state also includes packages whose installed version is different from the candidate version

AFAIK it judges packages based on:
# Packages not from official repos,
# Packages not in main,
# Older obsolete packages that are still installed.

So it might be the same for you.

[fred44nl]

this is what apt-forktracer tells me:

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fred44nl@Debian:~$ sudo apt-forktracer
python-sabyenc (3.3.6-0ubuntu1~jcfp1~16.04) [LP-PPA-jcfp-sab-addons: 3.3.6-0ubuntu1~jcfp1~16.04] [Debian: 3.3.5-1]
sabnzbdplus (2.3.9-0ubuntu1~jcfp1~16.04) [Debian: 2.3.6+dfsg-1] [LP-PPA-jcfp-nobetas: 2.3.9-0ubuntu1~jcfp1~16.04]
par2-tbb (0.4+20150503-0ubuntu1~jcfp1~xenial) [LP-PPA-jcfp-sab-addons: 0.4+20150503-0ubuntu1~jcfp1~xenial]
plexmediaserver (1.16.1.1291-158e5b199) [Artifactory: 1.16.1.1291-158e5b199 1.16.0.1226-7eb2c8f6f 1.15.8.1198-eadbcbb45]

still, no explanation for the extra 1 GB on disk-space and so many more packages.

[CwF]

still, no explanation for the extra 1 GB on disk-space and so many more packages.

Mostly in /var/cache/apt/archives/

Learn to clean out orphans and anything obsolete you're not using, and that cache.

Yes, the fat is to be expected, the update adds stuff, you then clean it.

[Ardouos]

still, no explanation for the extra 1 GB on disk-space and so many more packages.

Mostly in /var/cache/apt/archives/

Learn to clean out orphans and anything obsolete you're not using, and that cache.

Yes, the fat is to be expected, the update adds stuff, you then clean it.

Adding to this, you can easily use tools like ncdu to track what is taking so much space.

[fred44nl]

Mostly in /var/cache/apt/archives/

there is practically nothing in there.

Learn to clean out orphans and anything obsolete you're not using, and that cache.

followed the instructions from https://raphaelhertzog.com/mastering-debian/

installed deborphan and worked through some orphans.
now I am down to 1088 packages, against 872 from Stretch
the number of services is only +1, being apparmor, which makes sense

but how do you find as you say "anything obsolete you're not using" ??

[CwF]

there is practically nothing in there.

Should be !? If I upgrade 872 packages, there are 872 packages in the cache. There can be multiple versions in the cache. Maybe you are using something that caches elswhere? Typically the upgrade will also create many orphans and a few obsoletes. People do things different ways, Synaptic tells me. Don't worry about the exact number of packages, developers may break things out into more smaller packages, or condense. Preferences like installing suggestions and other optional extras will change the count. Only a 1000 is pretty tight...1800+ is fat.

You could just jump to the end of the story and try bleachbit. It's easy to clean the cache and 'localizations' the other biggie I didn't mention.

[fred44nl]

there are 872 packages in the cache. There can be multiple versions in the cache.

I must have used Aptitude to clean the cache, which I do from time to time
looked at Bleachbit. seems rather drastically.
now I'm down to 3.0 GB and 1089 packages.

what it comes down to is, that Buster is bigger or fatter than Stretch.

[Deb-fan]

Still for a good OS 3gbs in 2019 is dang good. +1 on removing unused localizations, bleachbit has never caused me issues but only use a few of its options(like apt archives and locales etc) Everything bleachbit does can be done manually of course. Slim os you have there OP.

[CwF]

...there used to be a cli localpurge way to clean out extra languages. Bleach bit will clear out 10's of megabytes in localizations after big upgrades. I use it to clear sectors as free also before I back up the OS image to a file, and with other functions like apt-cache and temps, an overall step saver. My Jessie was 1.4GB, a more complete Stretch 1.7 GB, now Buster as complete is 2.1 GB @ 1356 packages. That's as skinny as I want it.

[fred44nl]

Bleachbit is a rather drastic, but all the same handy tool, that can remove all yr logfiles.
but the grow back, as they are rotated, as they should.
my machine is a headless media server, so it does noet need cups, players, sound, etc.etc.
that's why the number of packages are limited

[fred44nl]

Still for a good OS 3gbs in 2019 is dang good.

as I said, Stretch was 872 packages for me.
still slimming Buster, down to 938 now

[Deb-fan]

No worries whatever a given nixer prefers. If absolutely minimizing number of packages and install size is a major concern for you, cool. You're trimming it down there. Edit: Much better in this than myself. According to running vrms (the virtual Richard M. Stallman utility) I've got 1,450 packages, including 6 non-free and 3 contrib packages. The root/ directory is 6gbs,which includes whatever is in my user's /home. Still think even 6gbs is great for a full Os in 2019 though.