Cache is no longer pruned by default

[Hidde Brugmans]

For internet files for instance it is quite normal to have settings to set the
maximum cache size, and rules for clearing that cache, for instance files more
than X days old.

Currently there does not seem to be such a thing for apt, save for the "leave"
"clear after download" and "clear now" options that synaptic offers.

I just held a quick poll in #ubuntu-nl, and I was the one with the smallest
/var/cache/apt/archives

hidde@system:~$ du -sm /var/cache/apt/archives
562 /var/cache/apt/archives

That's 562mb, for the record.
Now I know how to clean it, and with my fancy fast hardware, I can't be bothered
much.
The story changes however when people dist-upgrade on 5-20gb laptops.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

See /etc/cron.daily/apt

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

These seem to be the defaults in cron.daily:

    MaxAge=0
    MinAge=2
    MaxSize=0

This will cause files never to be expired. Did you change this in your recent
updates to the script? We should definitely be expiring by default.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20archive
APT::Archives::MaxAge "30";
APT::Archives::MinAge "2";
APT::Archives::MaxSize "500";

We expire by default and the default settings are the ones above. Can please
tell me if that file has different values for you or if for some reason anacron
is not run on your system?

Cheers,
 Michael

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> $ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20archive
> APT::Archives::MaxAge "30";
> APT::Archives::MinAge "2";
> APT::Archives::MaxSize "500";
>
> We expire by default and the default settings are the ones above. Can please
> tell me if that file has different values for you or if for some reason anacron
> is not run on your system?

OK, I forgot (or didn't notice) that you'd placed defaults in another file.

I have the same default values, and my apt cache (as usual) is a reasonable
size. I override two of these values in apt.conf:

APT::Archives::MaxAge "7";
APT::Archives::MaxSize "5120";

So it's working for me, but I'm not using the default configuration either

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

After some irc talk with the bug reporter I'm not sure that this is a bug and
not a misunderstanding.

Hidde, could you please check if it really is a problem (e.g. by repolling on
#ubuntu-nl about:
$ du -sh /var/cache/apt/archives
$ find /var/cache/apt/archives -mtime +30 -and -ctime +30

and if that does not match the values they have set in there apt configuration.

(I lower the severity because I'm pretty sure that the script/defaults are
working for most people so I don't think it's a major problem).

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

Micheal

I'll check, but I'm indeed pretty convinced it was a misunderstanding.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

As disucussed on irc this is probably a misunderstanding and not a bug. I close
it now.