nerdylorrin.net wiki: PackageManagement

nerdylorrin.net wiki: PackageManagement

Maintenance
APT doesn't ever wipe the cache of .deb files that have been downloaded. To do this run apt-get autoclean.

APT doesn't automatically uninstall unneeded dependencies when packages are uninstalled. deborphan attempts to detect unused packages. Try deborphan -P to see the priority level of the detected packages; best not to unstinstall anything not marked optional or extra. By default packages that are suggested or recommended are treated as if they were required (i.e. deborphan won't list them).

Picking the Best Mirror
Install apt-spy and run apt-spy -d sarge -a North-America, substituting your distro and geographical area. It will automatically write the results to your /etc/apt/sources.list. Note that if you've done anything to your sources.list (e.g. tracking stable and unstable or a non-official archive) you'll have to merge the new sources.list with the old sources.list.bak.

Troubleshooting
An error like this

Hit http://non-us.debian.org testing/non-US/non-free Release
> Reading Package Lists... Error!
> E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
> E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room

means you ran out of memory because apt's default mem allocation is too small. Add the following to /etc/apt/apt.conf (this file may not exist yet)

APT {
Cache-Limit 16777216;
};

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