Debian – can i remove debian apt cache dir

cachedebian

i am trying to free up some space on my server, and i noticed that

/var/cache/apt has 322M

assuming that it is just a cache, in my mind it should be ok to delete those files and if it needs it again, then it will just download the files again

is that the correct assumption to make ?

serve: debian 4

Best Answer

Apt can do this with itself with the clean and autoclean options.

   clean
       clean clears out the local repository of retrieved package 
       files. It removes everything but the lock file from 
       /var/cache/apt/archives/ and /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/ ....

   autoclean
       Like clean, autoclean clears out the local repository of retrieved 
       package files. The difference is that it only removes package files 
       that can no longer be downloaded, and are largely useless....

Related Solutions

Linux RAM Cache – Caching and Preloading Files into RAM

vmtouch seems like a good tool for the job.

Highlights:

query how much of a directory is cached
query how much of a file is cached (also which pages, graphical representation)
load file into cache
remove file from cache
lock files in cache
run as daemon

vmtouch manual

EDIT: Usage as asked in the question is listed in example 5 on vmtouch Hompage

Example 5

Daemonise and lock all files in a directory into physical memory:

vmtouch -dl /var/www/htdocs/critical/

EDIT2: As noted in the comments, there is now a git repository available.

Ubuntu – Debian/Ubuntu is it possible to reinitialize /var/lib/apt/lists and /var/apt/cache after deleting them

Yes, you can delete them!

Let's clone a VM and see what happens! :)

$ rm -r /var/cache/apt /var/lib/apt/lists
$ apt-get update #takes a while re-fetching everything
$ apt-get install <some-random-package>

Directories are recreated from the apt-get update operation and all is well. I might leave the *.gpg files alone if you're feeling paranoid, but otherwise those files are all ok to disappear.

In the past, I've had issues where I've had to manually mkdir /var/cache/apt/archives, but that no longer seems to be an issue.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux RAM Cache – Caching and Preloading Files into RAM

Ubuntu – Debian/Ubuntu is it possible to reinitialize /var/lib/apt/lists and /var/apt/cache after deleting them

Yes, you can delete them!

Related Topic