On Wed, 28 Dec 2022 17:45:25 -0500
Bill Cunningham <bill.cu1234(a)gmail.com> wrote:
What files are basically safe to remove because they are caches and
such? There is the invisible file .cache. And the /var/cache. The
files in /tmp are these safe to delete? Are there any other files you
can delete? For example if you were using rsync, what file would you
not want to backup, because they are just caches?
I saw yesterday in devel that there are over 23,000 packages in Fedora.
No one is going to know the intricacies of all those packages. It is
on you to perform trial and error to determine what is necessary or
not for the packages you have. I compile a custom kernel tuned to my
hardware. No one can tell me what I can leave out or not, except me. I
use trial and error, and trim it until something breaks.
That said, because I compile packages (and some programs) locally, I
don't bother backing up the .ccache directory in my home directory. I
also do my backups from another version of Fedora with the version
being backed up not booted, so that there are no temporary files. Like
Tom, I ignore space except for obvious wastes like the ~/.ccache
directory and ~/rpmbuild. If you are desperate, you could
ignore all the files under /var/log. They will be recreated as the
system runs (I think), but a restore will have no information about the
system's previous state.