15. Cleaning up Your Disks, Freeing Up Disk Space

[A new addition to this HOWTO - not yet complete]

So you've installed your system, or you want to install X but you don't have enough room on your disks to install it. What can you do to free up some space? There is a huge amount of space that can be freed up by deleting the unused material in a dpkg-based system.



• 1. Strip libraries and binaries.
  

  Many libraries and binaries are distributed with debugging information. Running file on these files will tell you ``not stripped'' if so. When copying binaries to your root filesystem, it is good practice to use:
  
  objcopy --strip-all FROM TO
  Important: When copying libraries, be sure to use strip-debug instead of strip-all.

objcopy is a binary found in the binutils package.

  
  
• 2. Delete metadata in /usr/src/doc/* directories.
  

  These include changelog's, todo list's, readme's, etc., but be careful what you delete.

  
  
• 3. Delete material in the /usr/share/locale directory.
  
  
• 4. Delete material in the /usr/share/keymaps directory.
  

  You are stuck with the psion keyboard, and don't mess with it.

  
  
• 5. Delete unused fonts from the /usr/share/consolefonts directory.