computer-janitor(8)
NAME
computer-janitor - clean up a system installation
SYNOPSIS
computer-janitor find computer-janitor cleanup [--all] [CRUFT]... computer-janitor ignore [CRUFT]... computer-janitor unignore computer-janitor-gtk [options] [CRUFT]...
DESCRIPTION
computer-janitor and computer-janitor-gtk find and remove cruft from
your system. The first one is a command line program, the latter has a
graphical user interface.
Cruft is anything that shouldn't be on the system, but is. Stretching
the definition, it is also things that should be on the system, but
aren't. Examples:
- o Packages that were installed because something else depended on
- them, but now nothing depends on them anymore. Typically this includes large numbers of libraries.
- o Packages that are no longer supported by the current release of
- the operating system. This can, for example, be applications whose development have stopped and that have no support, including no security support, anymore. Keeping such applications installed can be dangerous.
- o Configuration tweaks that are missing from the system, but which
- would be there if the system was installed from scratch. For example, mount options for filesystems: the relatime option is an example.
- computer-janitor has four modes of operation, invoked by the first nonoption word in the argument list.
- o find searches for cruft and prints out a list of them. Each
- piece of cruft is also tagged with it's state: ignored or removable.
- o cleanup actually removes the cruft. It will remove those pieces
- of cruft you name on the command line. If you want to remove everything identified by find that is marked removable, you need to use the --all option.
- o ignore and unignore mark cruft as ignored or removable, respec
- tively.
OPTIONS
- --all With the cleanup operation, remove all pieces of cruft that are
- not ignored.
- --state-file=FILE
- Use FILE as the name of the state file, for persistent storage of the state (ignored or removable) of each piece of cruft. Default is /var/lib/computer-janitor/state.dat. Use /dev/null to disable persistent storage of state.
- --no-act
- Don't actually remove anything, just pretend to do so. This is useful for testing stuff.
- --verbose
- Be verbose: cause find to write a description of each piece of cruft it finds, to help the user understand why understand why the cruft is cruft.
EXIT STATUS
computer-janitor will return an exit code of 0 for successful operation
(no errors). It will return a non-zero exit code if there are any
errors. It is not an error to find cruft, or to not find cruft.
ENVIRONMENT
- COMPUTER_JANITOR_DEBUG
- Set this to yes to set the logging level to DEBUG rather than INFO.
- COMPUTER_JANITOR_PLUGINS
- Set this to the directory in which computer-janitor should look for plugins. The default is to look for them in /usr/share/computer-janitor/plugins.
FILES
- /var/lib/computer-janitor/state.dat
- This file stores the state of cruft: ignored or removable. It only stores the state of cruft that have been state manipulated. The state of cruft not mentioned in this file is removable.
- /etc/computer-janitor.d
- This directory contains whitelist files, which specify that certain things are never cruft. A whitelist file has a name that ends with .whitelist, and contains one name of cruft per line. (Empty lines and lines beginning with # are ignored.)
EXAMPLE
- To find all cruft on the system:
- computer-janitor find
- To remove a specific piece of cruft:
computer-janitor cleanup hello- To mark a piece of cruft as ignored, so that it isn't removed by cleanup:
computer-janitor ignore hello- To remove the ignored status:
computer-janitor unignore hello- To remove all cruft that isn't ignored:
computer-janitor cleanup --all