APT Tip: Purge Removed Packages

Many times I find the command-line utilities for package management faster and more convenient than GUI tools like Synaptic or Adept. Yet learning how to use them efficiently takes time. Here’s a trick you can use to purge packages that have already been removed with apt-get remove or aptitude remove. When a package is uninstalled, its configuration files are left on the system, in case you’ll want to install it again. Purging a package gets rid of these configuration files. This not only frees disk space, but also helps maintain the system clean. It’s easy to forget to add --purge to each apt-get remove command you run, but there’s an easy way to purge packages after you’ve removed them:

dpkg -l |awk ‘/^rc/ {print $2}’ |xargs sudo dpkg --purge

What this does is run a dpkg -l to list packages, select all lines that begin with “rc” (which means the package is removed, but its config files are still on the system), and pass them to dpkg --purge to get rid of them. Neat, huh?

NOTE: If you don’t use sudo, remove it from the command above and run the whole line as root.

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