Yum "info" eats disk space?

Chilly Willy · #1 17th November 2008, 08:11 PM

Why is it that the stuff that YUM CLEAN ALL deletes, seems to eat up 160M+ of disk space?
If I check the free space before & after issuing this command I get at LEAST this much difference. I know that there can be a lot of info & it has to go SOMEWHERE but when a person with limited disk space runs out they're "out of luck". So is there a way around this or does a person in this situation just need to install a bigger HD?

vallimar · #2 17th November 2008, 08:28 PM

Install a bigger hard drive. A 160mb may have been a big deal 10 years ago, but not now.
Either install a modern-sized hard drive, or stop hoarding whatever you are filling it up with.

sideways · #3 17th November 2008, 08:32 PM

set keepcache=0 in /etc/yum.conf to prevent downloaded packages being cached, and use rpm -qi for info on installed packages, it will prevent an unnecessary metadata download.

ianh1968 · #4 17th November 2008, 09:18 PM

The directory /var/cache/yum holds copies of all of the rpm files that have been downloaded during the various update processes. As has been said by "sideways", keepcache=0 will ensure that these files are not retained on your disk.

What is being cleaned is not "information" it is the actual install media for the software.

Jongi · #5 17th November 2008, 09:46 PM

how long is data kept in /var/cache/yum?

Chilly Willy · #6 17th November 2008, 10:23 PM

My present HD is a 6G - the amount of SPACE EATEN is 160M+. (plan to install at least a 10G with F10)

I forgot about the RPM's, will check it out - ASAP.

The use of the word "INFO" was just a reference do to the lack of a better term.

Thanks to all who replied (& any further) the info given may help.

n3t · #7 17th November 2008, 10:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vallimar

Install a bigger hard drive. A 160mb may have been a big deal 10 years ago, but not now.
Either install a modern-sized hard drive, or stop hoarding whatever you are filling it up with.

Lmfao, sorry i just had to laugh about this comment.. I worked on a pc the other day that had a 1 gig hd and then a slave that had a 2 gig. The sad part about it is they wanted to install windows 98 on it. I charged them 200 dollars just because i had to mess with all the partitions and had to wait on the slow cpu and ram... This is the only reason i work on pc's on the side

.. Back on track here... I have 6 500 gig external drives in my house not to mention 1 terabyte in my desktop and a 200 gig on my laptop.. I agree with you... SPACE IS CHEAP!!! The only thing that's cheap these days so take advantage of it. I remember 6 years ago an 80 gig hd cost as much as my terabyte now. As far as yum taking up so much space, that's why we have a temp folder.

Chilly Willy · #8 18th November 2008, 01:08 AM

I guess one of the things that surprised me about it taking such a big chunk is that LINUX is supposed to run on older / smaller capacity computers (at least the older OS's are) so it just got me that it eats up this much (& growing). No really big deal as long as one can come up with a HD big enough, but that isn't always a "snap your fingers & have it magically appear" situation.

As for now, I have "work arounds" so until I get ready for F10, I'll do what I have to & get ready for a bigger HD. Need the extra room to do other things, like videos, anyway. Funny, up until now, 6G was, really OK. Nothing to write home about but OK.

BTW: 160M, I use more than that on a FLASH DRIVE... Haven't use that small of a HD since the "early" DOS days.

pwca · #9 18th November 2008, 01:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by n3t

Lmfao, sorry i just had to laugh about this comment.. I worked on a pc the other day that had a 1 gig hd and then a slave that had a 2 gig. The sad part about it is they wanted to install windows 98 on it. I charged them 200 dollars just because i had to mess with all the partitions and had to wait on the slow cpu and ram... This is the only reason i work on pc's on the side

.. Back on track here... I have 6 500 gig external drives in my house not to mention 1 terabyte in my desktop and a 200 gig on my laptop.. I agree with you... SPACE IS CHEAP!!! The only thing that's cheap these days so take advantage of it. I remember 6 years ago an 80 gig hd cost as much as my terabyte now. As far as yum taking up so much space, that's why we have a temp folder.

No kidding... if you can't afford to purchase a larger hard drive these days then you've GOT to be living on the absolute bleeding edge of poverty row. If you're using a computer with PATA drives rather than the newer SATA drives a lousy $40 - $50 can get you a drive with at least 80Gb. And I JUST noticed a sale going on at one online retailer whose unloading 250Gb PATA drives for $50.

This is just too silly for words any longer.

n3t · #10 18th November 2008, 05:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

I guess one of the things that surprised me about it taking such a big chunk is that LINUX is supposed to run on older / smaller capacity computers (at least the older OS's are) so it just got me that it eats up this much (& growing). No really big deal as long as one can come up with a HD big enough, but that isn't always a "snap your fingers & have it magically appear" situation.

As for now, I have "work arounds" so until I get ready for F10, I'll do what I have to & get ready for a bigger HD. Need the extra room to do other things, like videos, anyway. Funny, up until now, 6G was, really OK. Nothing to write home about but OK.

BTW: 160M, I use more than that on a FLASH DRIVE... Haven't use that small of a HD since the "early" DOS days.

This is true but most of the time when you run linux on small capacity hardware most people don't use a package manager to install packages, what they do install is from source. Another thing to look at is if you had min space all you would want is min out of your distro. By using a package manager to install things software or updates most people have at least a 10 gig hard drive and that's plenty of space on a min system even with a few programs. If you're worried about it taking up so much space you could make a simple crontab or even a shell script to run yum clean all after a certain amount of time or after yum runs. I don't think most people that's worried about that small amount of space is updating much or installing many programs.

Chilly Willy · #11 18th November 2008, 06:01 AM

OK - yeah I realize that the smaller systems use "special versions" adapted to that but still got me.
I am pretty much doing what you suggested, only manually as it isn't that big of a deal since I know what is going on. Was a real bummer until I did. (figuring out what was eating up all my free space)

I think a 10G will do quite nicely for what I'm doing. (& I think I may have one already) Thanks for the info & confirming what I was thinking. At least now I have a plan of attack, so to speak.

BTW: I DO have another drive in this system that act as "storage / backup" so the 6G drive is for the F9 stuff that HAS to go there only. Everything else goes to the "backup" drive. (data, images, docs, downloads, etc)

Evil-I · #12 24th November 2008, 04:38 PM

I just threw away 3 x 80Gb PATA hard drives as being too small, slow and noisy to be of much use now. With drives being so cheap it seems pointless to try and struggle with too little storage space?

And yes, the modern fedora install is potentially larger than previous versions but mainly because it does so much more (or at least more easily for us lesser mortals who aren't coding gurus). When you think that a basic install of vista eats up 20Gb before installing anything else, relatively speaking, fedora is still very compact.