[ale] [Rant] Fedora Package Caching

[Ted W.]

dnf clean all was one of the first things I tried. It didn't clean 
anything from PackageKit :(

On 10/03/2017 09:23 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> dnf clean all
> 
> Much faster :-)
> 
> PackageKit is the tool that automatically downloads rpms for upgrade and 
> notifies you that updates are available in the gnome ui.
> 
> Best way to not have it happen (especially with manual cli upgrades) is 
> to disable PakageKit from startup in systemd.
> 
> On October 3, 2017 9:04:34 PM EDT, "Ted W." <ted-lists at xy0.org> wrote:
> 
>     Today my laptop warned me that disk space on / was running low. After
>     investigation I found out the source was /var/cache/PackageKit. It was
>     taking up over **24GB** of space of my 50GB root partition. 50GB!!!
> 
>     My first question was, what the heck is PackageKit and why is it eating
>     half of my root partition (10% of my ENTIRE DISK)!? Thinking it was
>     something to do with the standard package caching, I looked to `dnf` and
>     `pkcon` for help. Found a solution to purge some cached files. This
>     helped but didn't really make a noticeable dent. Looks like most of the
>     files were in /var/cache/PackageKit/25.... 25... I'm on Fedora 26! Why
>     the heck is 10% of my disk being used by packages cached from a version
>     of Fedora I'm not even running!
> 
>     Turns out Gnome3 is trying to be "helpful" and in their all knowing
>     ways, the developers have thought it would be "correct" if they enabled
>     download caching for ALL packages you update BY DEFAULT. Even if you've
>     _never_used_the_graphical_package_manager!
> 
>     W  T  F
> 
>     Thankfully, there was an easy fix to all of this:
> 
>     Remove the files:
>     `# find /var/cache/PackageKit -type f -name \*.rpm -exec rm {} +`
> 
>     Turn off auto downloading:
>     `# gsettings setorg.gnome.software <http://org.gnome.software>  download-updates false`
> 
>     I've gotten mostly used to Gnome3 since it was made the default in
>     Fedora many years ago but sometimes I still find things like this that
>     really grind my gears. Defaults that try to be "helpful" and have
>     absolutely no sanity checking to ensure they're not doing something
>     completely and utterly brain dead!
> 
>     Original bug report:https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=80053
>     StackExchange post:https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/265755/fedora-23-can-i-safely-delete-files-in-var-cache-packagekit-metadata-updates
> 
>     </rant>
> 
>     - Ted
> 
> 
> -- 
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. All tyopes are thumb related 
> and reflect authenticity.