Can I remove distfiles?

[cesar]

Hello everyone:

I'm new to Gentoo for about 2 weeks. Before I used RH. I'd like to ask a few things about Portage,

1./ I thought it was like an index database, with just the names of the packages in it, but checking the /usr/portage/distfiles, I realize that all the files installed in my machine are there in zip or tar.gz format. That's taking a lot of space (450 MB so far, and I haven't installed Gnome!!!). Is it safe to remove them? Why would the system needs them if they are already installed?

2./ I was downloading mozilla-firebird using emerge and noticed itwas about 30 MB. Is there a way to know the size of the files emerge is going to download? I now about dependencies using --pretend option, but I'd also like to know about the size of each package.

3./ I have a broken link using the flash plugin in firebird, this is the error:

LoadPlugin: failed to initialize shared library libflashplayer.so [libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such a file or directory]

Is there a way, using emerge, to know in which package that library is contained? I know there is an option "emerge -s" but that's for the package's name, here I need to give the name of one of the files contained in that package.

I appreciate your help,

Cesar

[McFly0]

Re. 1./ Sorry! No Idea

Re: 2./ With the -p option you get all needed packeges, then with search u can get each packagesize. Sorry - but I don't know a better way
I would wish such a feature too.

Re. 3./ I use Firebird too and had problems with GPL Flashplugin. Now I use netscape-flash and Firebird works perfect

With

Code: Select all

qpkg -f /the/file

u get the package, which owns the file!

U get qpkg with

Code: Select all

emerge app-portage/gentoolkit

[cesar]

Re. 3./ I use Firebird too and had problems with GPL Flashplugin. Now I use netscape-flash and Firebird works perfect

With

Code: Select all

qpkg -f /the/file

u get the package, which owns the file!

U get qpkg with

Code: Select all

emerge app-portage/gentoolkit

Great!!! Now I have Flash in my browser.

I hope someone can answer the other questions.

[rjtupas]

1. You can safely delete the files in the /usr/portage/distfiles directory. The files are kept by default after an emerge. If you unmerge and subsequently emerge the same package, portage will use the tarball in distfiles instead of downloading it from the internet.

2. Try emerge -s mozilla-firebird. The output will give you the download size along with other useful information.

Welcome to Gentoo,

Randy

[McManus]

1. Yes, you can safely delete all of the files in:
/usr/portage/distfiles
/usr/portage/packages
/var/tmp/portage/*

after you are done emerging. If you are worried about disk space, you might want to also limit the ccache size in /etc/make.conf since the default is 2 GB, which is too big for my personal taste.