[08:44] <jibel> pitti, we're short on system disk space on the phone, do we need /var/cache/apt/*.bin for apport?
[08:45] <jibel> there are src and binaries indexes and it takes 50MB or os
[08:45] <jibel> so*
[08:45] <jibel> they cannot be regenerated since the fs is ro
[08:45] <pitti> /var/cache/ is r/o?
[08:46] <pitti> jibel: well, I'd say kill them -- as you can't change packages in the system image anyway, it's fairly irrelevant for apport
[08:46] <pitti> and as soon as you switch to r/w and run apt-get update, the cache will come back
[08:47] <pitti> jibel: I'm not 100% sure, let me test this a bit
[08:48] <jibel> pitti, already saved 100MB by stripping dekko and scopes and removing various logs generated at build time.
[08:48] <pitti> jibel: I don't even have a /var/cache/apt/*.bin
[08:48] <jibel> pitti, on the phone?
[08:48] <pitti> I mean on a normal xenial desktop
[08:49] <jibel> pitti, did you configure apt to not generate them maybe?
[08:49] <jibel> I found a wiki page from you where you explain how to do it
[08:50] <pitti> right, that was some "how to downsize your raring install" for an OEM project
[08:50] <jibel> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReducingDiskFootprint#Disable_apt_caches
[08:50] <pitti> not knowingly on my system, but apt may have changed between vivid and xeniall
[08:50] <jibel> I've these files on xenial
[08:50] <jibel> and they are recent
[08:51] <pitti> jibel: anyway, apport doesn't directly use the cache; and if apt doesn't have it, it'll read the _Packages lists, which is just slower, but works
[08:51] <pitti> jibel: so, kill'em
[08:51] <pitti> unless you *also* removed /var/lib/apt/lists/ of course
[08:52] <jibel> let me check
[08:52] <jibel> yeah it's empty
[08:52] <pitti> jibel: it's quite easy to test too -- run "apport-cli unity8" and see if you get proper Dependencies: or an error
[08:53] <jibel> okay I'll try that
[08:53] <pitti> without either the cache or the lists it should have some trouble
[08:54] <pitti> get_dependencies() uses python-apt right now
[08:54] <pitti> it could possibly be rewritten to call dpkg instead
[08:54] <pitti> (which is slower with lots of dependencies, but doesn't need the apt infos then)
[08:56] <jibel> pitti, apport is the only thing that needs these packages afaik. I'll start by removing obvious cruft, then we'll see what we can do with this if we need to reclaim more space
[08:56] <jibel> these files*
[08:57] <pitti> jibel: does it freak out without the *.bin?
[08:57] <jibel> pitti, trying now
[08:57] <pitti> jibel: yeah, and it's also relatively pointless -- the system image channel/version is enough, we don't really need the precise Dependencies: at report time if we have a way to reconstruct them later
[09:03] <jibel> pitti, apparently it doesn't really matter for apport. Here is a test https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity8/+bug/1572455
[09:03] <ubot5`> Launchpad bug 1572455 in unity8 (Ubuntu) "[TESTING ONLY] Testing apport without apt indexes" [Undecided,New]
[09:07] <pitti> jibel: ah, very nice; so I guess apt.Cache() is clever enough to fall back to querying dpkg
[09:11] <pitti> jibel: that actually makes sense; use dpkg's database for installed packages, and apt's caches/lists for candidates