Home Cleanup Proceedure...

Quote from Corey Venour..

   Please. We all need to live together on this machine, but it is becoming
   increasingly difficult to do anything. Let's clear some space, and make
   it run a little better.

Would everyone please look through their home directories and try to
do the following.

1/ In your home directory please execute the following to discover
    where you are using disk space so you can concentrate on those
    areas. NOTE these commands could take a bit of time.

      For text displays use
        :::prompt:::> du
      or for just the usage in each sub-directory and a total
        :::prompt:::> du -s * .

      For X winodws displays use the following
        :::prompt:::> du | xdu &


2/ Remove files which are

    a) Core files
        NOTE: The system automatically removes these after 3 days,
        These files are however very large so when space is tight a
        special search is often a good idea.

          :::prompt:::> find ~ -name "core" -print | xargs rm

    b) Any files which you No longer needed.
        Particularly old temporary files and reports. To look at how old
        files are please use in appropriate directories.

          :::prompt:::> ls -Flag

    c) Which will not be used for some time but can be generated from
        another source.  For example:
            .dvi files which can be re-generated from .tex files

    d) Clean out source directories of object files and executables
        Most source directories have a make file which have appropriate
        rules to clean that source area. Eg one of the following
        usually works.
          :::prompt:::> make clobber
          :::prompt:::> make realclean
          :::prompt:::> make clean

    e) Old mail folders and files
        or go through with your mail program and clean out your mail


  3/ Compress large files, like postscript files, which are not needed
    for some time  or  are just being stored for future use.

        To compress    file -> file.Z   use
          :::prompt:::> compress file

        To later decompress
          :::prompt:::> uncompress file.Z

    Altunativally and preferabally, use a new compression program
    called GZIP which is available for all machines including PCs.

        To gzip a file    file -> file.gz
          :::prompt:::> gzip file

        To un-gzip. Note this will also uncompress compressed (.Z) files.
          :::prompt:::> gzip -dv file.gz

    NOTE: WWW Users should be able to read compressed postscript file
    automatically, you do not need to keep WWW postscript files
    uncompressed.

        To gzip all your postscript files in your home directory use
          :::prompt:::> find ~ -name "*.ps" -print | xargs gzip


  4/ Archive whole subdirectories for storage
    I suggest you copy archived sources to a directory you create for
    such files.

    Archive a sub-directory (to a compressed tar file)

      cd to just above the sub-directory then
        :::prompt:::> tar cvf - subdir | compress > subdir.tar.Z

      now remove the subdirectory (to actually save some space)
        :::prompt:::> rm -r subdir

      and move the archive to your special directory


    List the contents of a compressed tar file
        :::prompt:::> zcat filename.tar.Z | tar tvf -


    De-Archive a compressed tar file

      cd to where you want the sub-directory created
        :::prompt:::> zcat filename.tar.Z | tar xvf -

      and remove or re-archive when finished


    For more information on tar archives please look for a companion
    Guide to Archiving in this directory or at the URL of

        http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/tower/NE/usage/

    This document also contains information on gzip tar archives and
    a set of csh/tcsh aliases to make your archiving easier.


  5/ Strip your executable programs.
    Executable programs under UNIX contain a lot of old information
    left in them from the compilation and link build process.  This
    information sometimes occupy upto 30% of the executables size and
    even more is you built a debugging ( -g option ) version.  This
    information is NOT used by the program and should be removed to save
    space.

      Cd into your "bin" directory or where ever you keep executables
        :::prompt:::> cd ~/bin

      Strip all the files in this directory.
        :::prompt:::> strip *

    NOTE: strip will automatically ignore previously strip'ed files,
    shell scripts and non-executables.
    WARNING: Do NOT strip executables for another architure or machine
    except on that machine.