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...
