Cleaning up

[Heavy-G]

Hi,

I am a happy Knoppix/Debian user for over 5 months now, but there is one little thing that I'm not so very happy with.
Untill recently I did not know of the --purge option for apt-get, and since I've cleaned up my Knoppix HD install (removed alot of packages I didn't use) there are loads of configuration files in /etc/.
Does anyone know of a solution to solve this? I would really like to clean up my system..

[Stephen]

Hi,

I am a happy Knoppix/Debian user for over 5 months now, but there is one little thing that I'm not so very happy with.
Untill recently I did not know of the --purge option for apt-get, and since I've cleaned up my Knoppix HD install (removed alot of packages I didn't use) there are loads of configuration files in /etc/.
Does anyone know of a solution to solve this? I would really like to clean up my system..

If you know for certain that you are not going to re-install the application you can remove it's configurations files but if you ever re-install the application the configuration files will not be re-created the system will still think they are installed. It would probably be best if you are going to delete to move the files to a temporary directory to make sure that nothing else depends on them then after a while if things go well then delete them or use tar and compress them up to save space in case you ever re-install an app or find you need one of the files.

[Heavy-G]

I've been thinking about that too, but it does not seem the best solution :/
I was kind of hoping for a apt-get (or dpkg) --purge-all-orphan-configfiles kind of thing :)

[NikiBob]

Just do 'dpkg --purge packagename' to clean everything including configuration files.

[Heavy-G]

But that would take an awful lot of time, plus, I don't remember all of the packages that have been installed :(
Is there a list somewhere on my system with all the packages I ever had maybe? Then I could write a script that compares that list with the packages that I have at the moment, and do a dpkg --purge if it's not there anymore..

[Dave_Bechtel]

Disclaimer - I haven't done this before... but grab the original CD that you used to install from, and compare the packages.txt with the results of ' dpkg -l '.

' dpkg -l >curpkgs.txt '
' diff packages.txt curpkgs.txt '

--But seriously, config files don't take up a whole lot of space - especially with reiserfs and the default mount option (tail.)

--The other options I have both involve a lot of work, and should really only be done if you're really worried about these config files being on there from a security perspective, or (like me) you just want to feel good about how clean your system is.

0. BACKUP /etc. ' tar czvf ~/etc-backup.tgz /etc '

1. Fire up ' mc ' and go thru /etc file by file, deleting things that you know aren't installed anymore. However, this requires a thorough knowledge of Linux in general.

=====

Option 2:

o Backup critical files - CHANGE SCRIPT AS NECESSARY FOR YOUR SYSTEM ; I have an entry in fstab for /mnt/zippy as a 100-MB Zip IDE internal drive. - #BEGIN bkpcrit


#!/bin/sh
# Backup critical files (hopefully)

dest='/mnt/zippy'
mount $dest

##[ -e "$dest/NOTHERE" ] && echo "$dest NOT MOUNTED" && exit 99

# "If" checking for NOTHERE file...

dest=$dest'/linux-p233-knoppix32'
echo $dest = PK
read

mkdir $dest

# Copy this bkp script to zippy
cp $0 $dest
cp ~/localinfo.dat $dest

dpkg --get-selections > ~/dpkg-selections.txt
## To get your currently installed packages. Once you re-install then:
# dpkg --set-selections < dpkg-selections.txt
## To restore the saved selections to the package system.
#
## Then
# dselect update
## To update the database and
# apt-get dselect-upgrade
## To perform an upgrade using the the restored packages list.

time {
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-ETC-debian.tar.gz /etc
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-DEV-debian.tar.gz /dev
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-rootbin-debian.tar.gz /root
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-davesrc-debian.tar.gz /home/dave/src
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-davebin-debian.tar.gz /home/dave/bin
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-usr-local-debian.tar.gz /usr/local
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-var-dpkg-status.tar.gz /var/lib/dpkg
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-var-dpkg-backups.tar.gz /var/backups
# Dotfiles
cd /root
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-root-dotfiles--restore-locally.tar.gz .[^.]*
cd /home/dave
tar cpvzf $dest/bkp-dave-dotfiles--restore-locally.tar.gz .[^.]*
}

ls $dest -al
df $dest
exit


o Backup entire system to a separate partition that won't be overwritten by a reinstall - #BEGIN bkpsys


#!/bin/bash

mount /dev/hda12 /mnt/extra
cd /mnt/extra/
mkdir bkps
cd bkps/

ls -l

bkpfname='hdb3-knoppix-32-intermediate-mostcfg-20030505'

dpkg -l >~/DEBInstalled.list

# XXX BACKUP DEB CACHE BEFORE RUNNING $0!!
#apt-get clean

time updatedb

time tar \
--exclude=/mnt/* --exclude=/proc \
--exclude=/cdrom --exclude=/floppy \
--exclude=/.journal --exclude=/lost+found \
-cvf - / | \
gzip -9cv >$bkpfname.tar.gz

ls -l


o Now, reinstall latest Knoppix version. When done, **modify for your personal system** and then use the following script to recover necessary files from the backup: #BEGIN migratcrit


#!/bin/sh

# BACKUP ORIG ETC 1ST BEFORE RUNNING THIS!!

usetar=~/p233-etc.tar.gz

cd /

tar xzvf $usetar \
etc/apt/sources.list \
etc/init.d/boot.local etc/rc5.d/S98bootlocal \
etc/init.d/console-screen.sh \
etc/ftpusers etc/inittab etc/inputrc etc/issue \
etc/login.defs etc/profile.local etc/proftpd.conf etc/securetty \
etc/squid etc/squid.conf \
etc/ssh/sshd_config etc/sudoers etc/syslog.conf etc/timezone

# - DID NOT migrate: (mostly due to security)
# /etc/ppp/* , /etc/hosts, /etc/inetd.conf, /etc/issue,
# /etc/resolv.conf, wvdial.conf.

# console-screen.sh - fix screen font
# inetd.conf ?
# issue - for security


--THEN, go thru and start deleting packages you don't need, this time with --purge. See this thread ( http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4627&highlight=purgedebs#21452 ) for another script that you can modify for personal use. (Notice it already has the --purge included.) I use this script for fresh installs, really helps to get the system where I want it quickly.

--And now, a final word of advice. Start logging *EVERY SINGLE CHANGE* that you make to your system as root. You're a sysadmin, after all. If you delete/add a package outside of apt-get upgrade, TRACK IT. If you're really paranoid, write a script frontend to apt-get that logs all your parameters. (In fact, I should do this myself.) If you change a config file, write down what it was, and why. I do this with a file, /root/localinfo.dat that goes in the critical backup. This can help when something goes wrong, or you need to recreate what you did on another install.


But that would take an awful lot of time, plus, I don't remember all of the packages that have been installed :(
Is there a list somewhere on my system with all the packages I ever had maybe? Then I could write a script that compares that list with the packages that I have at the moment, and do a dpkg --purge if it's not there anymore..

[Heavy-G]

That looks like a nice & clean way to do it, I'll try it for sure, thank you :)