I notice that old unused directories accumulate each time one updates spamassassin: $ tree -d var var `-- spamassassin |-- 3.002003 | `-- updates_spamassassin_org `-- 3.002004 `-- updates_spamassassin_org This will probably accumulate old perl versions one day too: lib `-- perl `-- 5.8.4 `-- auto `-- Mail `-- SpamAssassin Maybe one should do a clean remove before each install, but that would wipe out one's customizations.