Privacy Cleanup 101

[verndog]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

SECTION 2 go my attention. var/log files keep adding up. Especially dmesg and syslog files get compressed and new ones take their place. I have never had reason to view them. I'm sure at some point they could come in handy. Right now, not a problem, but over time, if I were to just upgrade then they could add up.

[kubicle]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

SECTION 2 go my attention. var/log files keep adding up. Especially dmesg and syslog files get compressed and new ones take their place. I have never had reason to view them. I'm sure at some point they could come in handy. Right now, not a problem, but over time, if I were to just upgrade then they could add up.

They don't add up indefinitely.

There's a logrotate cron job that rotates the logs and removes oldest back-logs...some back-logs are kept longer than others by default (and it's fully configurable via logrotate configuration)

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

Thanks Qqmike - wow you packed a lot into that guide as well as your dd command thread. These are great references with lots of examples.

A few notes...

I believe it is safe to delete /var/tmp/kdecache-mike/http/* and var/tmp/kdecache-mike/favicons/* .

Yes, these can be deleted while KDE is running - I've never had a problem with that.

To emphasize a point, two important directories are applications and configuration files:
/home/your_name/.kde/share/apps
/home/your_name/.kde/share/config
For each application (e.g., kate), you need to study what is under these two directories.

Just to clarify, those folders only apply to KDE apps. Other apps may store info in ~/.config, ~/.<app-name>, or elsewhere in the home folder.

In describing kscrubber:

The default for srm is that it will write two passes of zeros to a file before deleting it... The --onepass option runs it with just one zero-fill pass.

Actually the default for srm is 38 passes of random data. The default for kscrubber is two random passes (srm -l). And kscrubber "--onepass" option also uses random, not zeros (srm -ll). I'm not a big believer in zero-wiping.

-- shred

Another thing you might mention in comparing shred is that unlike srm, shred has no recursion (-r) option, whereas srm does. I also believe srm handles the filesystems better, using fsync, flushing disk caches, and other features.

disk full;

On this note, I recently noticed that my kubuntu system has grown by over 1G since I installed it! I don't see any obvious cause - it's not in the /home, /var, or /tmp folders.

BTW another great tool for seeing disk usage in a visual way is Filelight (in the repos).

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

Also, you did a nice job with your example scripts section, particularly relating to permissions and ownership. Many times people save scripts as user and run them as user, which opens security problems, as I discuss in this article. It is indeed much safer to always save your scripts as root in a root-owned folder, and run them from there, even if you are running them as a non-root user.

[Qqmike]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

@ IgnorantGuru,

Many thanks for checking the how-to! That's the kind of feedback we need around here

I made all the changes/clarifications/explanations you recommended (in the several places they occur throughout my how-to); I also used your last post and link regarding permissions (it is added as a quote at the end of the subsection on writing your own script).


As for the 1 GB boogy-man--disk space--I'm sure you checked Trash (including under /root), and how about root's home? Since you are cleaning the log files, it wouldn't be there (indicating a real problem in your system, although, as kubicle says, they get rotated and won't grow indefinitely). For me, every time it's happened, it's been in /root somewhere (ever use PhotoRec?! -- it'll fill up your partition in a heartbeat, under /root, esp if running multiple passes). I'd be curious to know where you find it when you do, if you care to post it here.

Again, many thanks for checking the how-to and for your very good suggestions for improving it and the corrections.

[verndog]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

A lot of work went into creating this. Thanks Qqmike!

I'm interested in the "cleaners"
I heard just recently about BleachBit. I installed it but didn't like the way it ran and some of the files it wanted to clean.

I see you recommended kscrubber. I'll give that a go. Under Windows I have more confidence on CCleaner.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

As for the 1 GB boogy-man--disk space--I'm sure you checked Trash (including under /root), and how about root's home?

/root is a good suggestion - didn't think of that as I don't normally find it there, but that isn't it. But I'm not sure about the totals - may not be as bad as 1G. Here is the picture before and after running kscrubber again this morning...

root# du -xh --max-depth=1 /                     
0    /dev                                 
16K   /media                                
536K  /root                                 
81M   /opt                                 
13M   /lib32                                
14M   /etc                                 
4.0K  /selinux                               
80K   /tmp                                 
0    /proc                                 
0    /sys                                 
2.9G  /usr                                 
193M  /home                                 
5.9M  /bin                                 
494M  /lib                                 
4.0K  /srv                                 
16K   /mnt                                 
59M   /boot                                 
11M   /sbin                                 
345M  /var                                 
16K   /lost+found                              
4.1G  /       
                            
root# kscrubber --clean                             
...

root# du -xh --max-depth=1 /
0    /dev
16K   /media
532K  /root
81M   /opt
13M   /lib32
14M   /etc
4.0K  /selinux
60K   /tmp
0    /proc
0    /sys
2.9G  /usr
193M  /home
5.9M  /bin
494M  /lib
4.0K  /srv
16K   /mnt
59M   /boot
11M   /sbin
341M  /var
16K   /lost+found
4.1G  /

So I figure the growth has to be in /usr, unless it's spread around. It's a 5G partition, and when I installed it there was 3.55G of files (I know because I made a partition backup). Now du says 4.1G. But Krusader shows 487M free out of 4.9G, which is 4.4G consumed. So depending on which numbers I believe it appears it grew by 600-900MB. I even tried deleting /var/tmp the other day but that didn't help.

Anyway I probably won't do anything further with it for now. It's just odd - I've never seen a linux install grow that much. If it gets much larger I may have to roll it back and then update carefully to see what did it.

[Qqmike]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

For /usr:
In my heavily used 8.04.3, I'm getting 1.9 G
In my barely used 9.10, I also get 1.9 G.
(using du)

[Snowhog]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

@IG

How many 'new' kernels have been installed since you installed?

[Qqmike]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

I have 3 kernels and all the files PLUS /grub, and it's only 75 MB. So it would take a heck of a lot of kernels to fill that much space reported by I-G.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

That was a good question, Snowhog. I had 31-14 thru -17 installed, so I removed -14 thru -16 in Synaptic (linux-image and linux-headers for each). That reported it would remove 587MB! Like Qqmike seems to be saying, I didn't think the kernels used that much, just the space they took in /boot. But apparently there's much more than that. I wonder that I never noticed this before, unless it's something new with Karmic.

0    /dev
16K   /media
540K  /root
81M   /opt
13M   /lib32
14M   /etc
4.0K  /selinux
44K   /tmp
0    /proc
0    /sys
2.7G  /usr
193M  /home
5.9M  /bin
145M  /lib
4.0K  /srv
16K   /mnt
17M   /boot
11M   /sbin
333M  /var
16K   /lost+found
3.5G  /

So that accounts for the lower end of my 600MB-900MB measurement. Even if that's not all I could do, it's certainly enough. Looks like it mostly came out of /usr and /lib. Did a reboot and everything seems okay. Thanks for the ideas.

[Snowhog]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101



The other thing to check (did you already mention that you did?) is if you still have downloaded packages in /var/cache/apt/archives and /var/cache/apt/archives/partial.

I routinely clean out these two directories.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

@Snowhog
I did do an 'aptitude clean', so I believe those are taken care of with that. Actually the 3.5G that du now reports is about the same as when I made the partition backup (which I noted at 3.55G), so it may have simply been those kernel packages.

@Qqmike
That kernel business might be something to add to your disk full decision tree?

[Qqmike]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

Yeah, I do have the apt in the cleaning stuff.
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get autoremove

Good idea about the kernels. I'll be darned, I wouldn't have guessed. I was way off in my post above.

[Qqmike]

Re: Privacy Cleanup 101

OK, done --> in the decision tree for "Disk Full!", (Reply #7), I added package archive cleaning and using your package manager to remove old kernels (linux-image and linux-headers for each).

Thanks, guys.