Re: [gentoo-user] cruft in /etc. How to clean in out.

[Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto]

> Maybe you should search the forums for "cruft". I remember Ed (?) Catmur once
> posted a script or something there.
I use a script named findcruft regularly (I think it is an improved
version of Ed Catmur's product; I'll check when I get home). It works
by finding all files on the filesystem (avoiding areas such as /proc,
/sys/ /dev/, /home, and such) and comparing that to the files managed
by Portage. The list of orphaned files is full of false positives,
caused by, for example, packages that create files outside the
knowledge of portage (I think many eselect modules do this for
example). It tries to diminish the "false positives" problem by having
a database of packages and files created by using said packages.

This database of course cannot be complete, and unfortunately it seems
to be very outdated. I would love to see more maintenance of this
script and, more importantly, the database.

In the current state, the list of orphaned files is huge, with a good
part of it probably being false positives. Since I don't want to move
a file without being sure it is cruft, I can only read that list and
delete the few files that I know about and am sure are cruft. I also
run the script regularly and save the results; each time I run the
script I compare the list with the previous one. I normally run the
script after I unmerge some packages.

In the end, if you want a clean system it seems you either have to
reformat every couple of years, or you have to be a walking
encyclopedia knowing the origin of every file in the huge list that
findcruft outputs so you know if they are cruft or not.

Sad. In my opinion, this problem needs to be addressed.

-- 
Software is like sex: it is better when it is free - Linus Torvalds