On 2022-04-21, Florian Obser <flor...@openbsd.org> wrote:
> On 2022-04-20 21:42 UTC, Stuart Henderson <stu.li...@spacehopper.org> wrote:
>> On 2022-04-20, Florian Obser <flor...@narrans.de> wrote:
>>> You will need a carefully curated /etc/sysclean.ignore file.
>>>
>>> You decided to put maildirs somewhere on the system, sysclean is not 
>>> omniscient, you need to tell it to leave them alone. Same with .git 
>>> directories.
>>> I don't recall needing to tell it about package config files though, that's 
>>> a bit weird.
>>
>> e.g. files which are added to /etc that aren't distributed in the package but
>> you create yourself
>
> Ah, yes. But it does understand directories, e.g. I have a lot of
> changes in /etc/icinga2 but I don't need to ignore it. I guess that's
> why I only need to ignore very little in /etc.
>
>>
>>> It's a bit daunting on first run if a lot of cruft has accumulated
>>> over the years, but it gets better. I'm using it for years, and I
>>> can't recall the last time I had to add anything to the ignore file.
>>>
>>> I run it from daily and also by hand after every upgrade to a snapshot.
>>>
>>> If it outputs a really long list I cleanup incrementally, for example:
>>> sysclean | fgrep /usr
>>
>> For a first run I would review "| fgrep /usr/local" as that's the most likely
>> place where files might exist that should not be cleaned, and it's
>> easier to
>
> tzk tzk, someone has been naughty and installed things without packages?
> ;)

I don't, but if someone has a machine with layer of accumulated cruft
and they do local build/installs then that's a good way to find them.

> I don't do that and I imagine if one installs compiled, dynamically
> linked programs by hand sysclean's returns deminish really fast because
> it won't understand that old libs are still needed.
>
> It's an awesome tool that takles a hard problem and for me succeedes
> with a bit of hand holding.

Me too.

> Btw. there is another school of thought that says old cruft doesn't need
> to be removed, it's not causing any harm. If you need a clean system
> just reinstall and restore config and data from backups. It's a good
> excercise to check that your backups are working.

I disagree, it can cause harm sometimes. Not least when you run out of
space in /usr halfway through untarring sets during an update...



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