About system maintenance; old configuration files/cache etc

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Manjaro is my first rolling release distro that I’m using on my primary machine. In the past, I’ve used fixed releases. I’ve been wondering how it’ll work with XFCE and all the XML config files over time. I think system files will be handled via pacman & pacnew files. But how do you know when something is obsolute/deprecated/unsupported in user config files.

For example, if I run xfconf-query -c xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts -lv, there is a line that says “/providers <<UNSUPPORTED”. I had wondered if there were DTD files to validate the XML config files, so a user could run xmllint on them. Manjaro maintainers must deal with this issue to keep their /etc/skel/.config files up to date. I wonder how they do it.

Here are a few thoughts.

  1. Home Cache
    In general I leave cache alone. Good applications (destroy/rebuild) should manage their cache. But it wouldn’t hurt to check cache once in awhile to see if some app has gone wild, no longer installed, or just periodically delete it.
 # file size larger than 1G
 find ~ -type f -size +1G -printf '%-12s %CY%Cm%Cd %P\n' | sort -nr

 # change time greater than 360 days
 find ~ -type f -iname '*cache*' -ctime +360 -printf '%CY%Cm%Cd %-12s %P\n' | sort -nr

 # find all occurrence of an application (replace NAME)
 find ~ -iname '*NAME*'

 # if system related I use locate
 sudo updatedb  # there's a timer for this too
 locate --ignore-case --regex NAME 

 # if just installed, adjust time as needed
 find -newermt '1 minute ago'
  1. Journal and Logs
 systemctl list-timers

  1. Packages and Updates

    • Watch the Stable Updates category here or via RSS. The thread is not only an announcement but where user’s are posting problems/fixes related to the upgrade. I think @philm would say if some action was needed (i.e., delete cache). The thread gets loooonnng.

    • Don’t be too quick to install, but don’t wait too long either :slight_smile:

    • Run pacman-mirrors --status before upgrading

    • Run DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff after every upgrade

    • Regarding package cache, see systemctl list-timers
      I’ve chosen to run paccache -rk3 -ruk0

    • Regarding Orphans, for the short time I’ve been on Manjaro I have run pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq). Mainly because I’ve been installing and unstalling to find replacements for kde apps.

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