Howto: Simple tuning of Debian systems

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Swynndla · #21 Post by **Swynndla** » 2007-08-16 05:33

How do you determine if one of those belong to packages that you use?

rickh · #22 Post by **rickh** » 2007-08-16 06:01

How do you determine if one of those belong to packages that you use?

One way is "apt-cache rdepends"

That will list all the packages Apt knows about which depend on the one you identify in the command, whether or not you actually have them installed.

It's quite a confusing (to me) area, though. Sometimes you can delete a package even though some other package shows up as a (reverse) dependency, and the dependent application will still work.

garrincha · #23 Post by **garrincha** » 2007-08-16 09:56

rickh wrote:
How do you determine if one of those belong to packages that you use?
One way is "apt-cache rdepends"

It's apt-rdepends, I think that the name may have changed.

rickh · #24 Post by **rickh** » 2007-08-16 11:54

It's apt-rdepends, I think that the name may have changed

Either works. You have to install apt-rdepends as a separate program.

garrincha · #25 Post by **garrincha** » 2007-08-16 15:07

rickh wrote:
It's apt-rdepends, I think that the name may have changed
Either works. You have to install apt-rdepends as a separate program.

Yeah, you're correct -
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/apt-rdepends

Bulkley · #26 Post by **Bulkley** » 2007-08-16 15:17

I'm puzzled by localepurge and the locales. I'm showing en and three en-us locales. Do I need them all? If I had my druthers, I'd like everything to use Canadian English, but I know that is unlikely. Can I cut back to a single choice? Or is that risky?

craigevil · #27 Post by **craigevil** » 2007-08-16 18:14

localepurge does have its bugs.

Debian -- localepurge

Please note, that this tool is a hack which is *not* integrated with Debian's package management system and therefore is not for the faint of heart. This program interferes with the Debian package management and does provoke strange, but usually harmless, behaviour of programs related with apt/dpkg like dpkg-repack, debsums, reportbug, etc. Responsibility for its usage and possible breakage of your system therefore lies in the sysadmin's (your) hands.

Please definitely do abstain from reporting any such bugs blaming localepurge if you break your system by using it. If you don't know what you are doing and can't handle any resulting breakage on your own then please simply don't use this package.

Swynndla · #28 Post by **Swynndla** » 2007-08-16 20:30

I've personally been using both deborphan and localepurge for ages without any problems at all.

localepurge seems to save me a surprising amount of space.

I guess the thing to remember is, don't use them unless you know what you are doing?

Another question that I've started to ask myself is "why isn't prelink|deborphan|localepurge|swappiness (and all the other 1000's of tweaks) part of the standard install/kernel?" I bet there are good reasons, but I think it's important to try and find out what those reasons are. It makes sense for me not to install a tweak unless I know what the downsides are.

e1even1 · #29 Post by **e1even1** » 2007-08-17 01:31

Swynndla wrote:I've personally been using both deborphan and localepurge for ages without any problems at all.

i can personally vouch for the localepurge warning. to get xemacs21 as a dependancy on one of my systems (after localepurge), i ended up having to add some russian manpage directory. very very boring.

mechmg93 · #30 Post by **mechmg93** » 2007-08-22 13:53

i read the gentoo prelink guide and i have a question??

the right file in debian for putting the line export KDE_IS_PRELINKED="1"

is /etc/profile??

i put it there, rebooted but kdeinit is still running

Azriel · #31 Post by **Azriel** » 2007-08-22 14:09

deborphan also works randomly for me. I've used it with my etch debian, and now with sid, and i get the same problem than said above: it find orphaned libraries which are not orphaned at all.

It would strongly advise to try a

Code: Select all

deborphan -d

before everything in order to see the dependencies of the libs, and then remove carefully one by one the one you think are ok for removal...

[EDIT]: ok, just after posting that, i've started to clean my HDD using deborphan -d, and apt-get remove the libraries without dependencies, and now, the ony thing found by bedorphan is tcltls, which is used by amsn, but is not really a dependencie (since amsn can work without it), so not really a problem. Just deborphan -A tcltls and it's done. Still i strongly advise removing manually each package, even if it is only to know what the hell is going on on your system

.

Lavene · #32 Post by **Lavene** » 2007-08-22 15:38

I have never had deborphan (I use the 'orphaner' frontend) remove libs with dependencies, but if it does it should be reported as a bug. However: if you have anything installed from source you can not trust it anymore of course since those dependencies are not known to apt.

Also remember that Unstable is called unstable for a reason. I can easily imagine deborphan fail on Sid systems...

Tina

rickh · #33 Post by **rickh** » 2007-08-22 15:46

I have never had a problem on Sid using # deborphan | xargs dpkg --purge

But, obviously, I don't guarantee that you won't. The question that arises in my mind is whether using dpkg --purge is leaving cruft from packages it is deleting.

I haven't gotten brave enough yet to try # deborphan | xargs aptitude remove