Hello,

as I was reading the newsgroup, I came across following post of Johan
Lindquist of 04/01/05:

<cite>
Before you do that, make sure to clean out /usr/portage/distfiles and
/var/tmp/portage. I can't really see how you'd manage to run out of
disk unless you're stockpiling distfiles or keeping workdirs around.
</cite>

Is it really totally harmless to delete everything in these directories
and, if so, is it possible to prevent the system to stack all these
files there?

Regards,

Kristof.

Kristof wrote:

> Hello,
>
> as I was reading the newsgroup, I came across following post of Johan
> Lindquist of 04/01/05:
>
> <cite>
> Before you do that, make sure to clean out /usr/portage/distfiles and
> /var/tmp/portage. I can't really see how you'd manage to run out of
> disk unless you're stockpiling distfiles or keeping workdirs around.
> </cite>
>
> Is it really totally harmless to delete everything in these directories
> and, if so, is it possible to prevent the system to stack all these
> files there?
>
> Regards,
>
> Kristof.

Yes it is safe, but I'm wondering if there's a way to delete all but the
latest versions of distfiles. Sometimes it is useful keeping several
versions around, but usually it's just a waste of time.
Any suggestions?

In alt.os.linux.gentoo, Xenofon uttered the immortal words:

> Yes it is safe, but I'm wondering if there's a way to delete all but the
> latest versions of distfiles. Sometimes it is useful keeping several
> versions around, but usually it's just a waste of time.
> Any suggestions?

One of these might help:
<http://gentooexperimental.org/script/repo/search?category%5B0%5D=cleaners&srch=true&categori es_mod%5B0%5D=is>

There are other scripts and techniques mentioned here:
<http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=3011>

--
Andy.

Xenofon wrote:

> Yes it is safe, but I'm wondering if there's a way to delete all but the
> latest versions of distfiles. Sometimes it is useful keeping several
> versions around, but usually it's just a waste of time.
> Any suggestions?

You can emerge tmpwatch and add the two directories to the list of directories
that would be watched, you can set in the tmpwatch how old a file should be
before deleted.

//Aho

"J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> writes:

> You can emerge tmpwatch and add the two directories to the list of
> directories that would be watched, you can set in the tmpwatch how
> old a file should be before deleted.

But for distfiles it is not the age of the file which is important, it
is whether it is the latest version.