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/Library/Receipts - what's this folder for?

cb911

cb911

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 12, 2002
4,134
4
BrisVegas, Australia
well i'm getting desprate so i've had to delete some software from my Panther partition.

i've also been going through the Classic (OS 9) folder and seeing what else i can get rid of.

but i came to /Library/Receipts and it's just a whole heap of packages in there. what are they there for?? is that so Software Update knows what's already been installed?

is it okay to delete the contents of that folder? it's only 50MB, but right now every MB counts for me....
 
The receipts contain information about the files that were installed by installers. This information is used to repair permissions, so if you delete them, you can no longer repair permissions.
 
HexMonkey, thank you. :)

i was about to delete some of them that i thought weren't important... you just saved me a whole lot of trouble. :)
 
you mentioned partition, that urks me. people, once and for all having seperate partitions for OS and then data is stupid!!!!!!!! well, it is for the most part. i can't assume thats what you have setup here, but i thought i'd take the chance to rant. there is no good reason to have multiple partitiions. it wastes space and assumes you can perfectly judge how much disk space you will need in the future for a given partition.
 
Plissken said:
you mentioned partition, that urks me. people, once and for all having seperate partitions for OS and then data is stupid!!!!!!!! well, it is for the most part. i can't assume thats what you have setup here, but i thought i'd take the chance to rant. there is no good reason to have multiple partitiions. it wastes space and assumes you can perfectly judge how much disk space you will need in the future for a given partition.
Click to expand...

Don't be too quick to judge ...

Seperate partitions is unbeatable if I want to go clean reinstalls of the OS.

umount /Users
umount /usr/local

Reformat /, do a clean reinstall of the OS

mount /Users
mount /usr/local

And I have a completely clean OS install, with all my data and all my locally installed programs. I wouldn't want to think about what's involved in doing that if I have everything on the same partition -- all that messy fumbling with finding external media large enough, copying everything over, copying it back, making sure I got the permissions and ownership right... Yuck. What a waste of time and space to have it all on the same partition!

If you don't want to reformat, you're right it is a waste of effort.
 
For the original poster: Language files and fonts for languages you don't use; there's some happy space savings if you're desperate and haven't done it yet.

Uh-oh, the partitioning argument again.

Most people indeed don't need to partition, and it's setting up for future space issues if they do. But that doesn't mean it's a waste for everybody. stcanard gave one very useful case (I've taken advantage of that time and again where I work), and here's another:

I start doing an operation on my data partition that takes large amounts of storage space (capturing video, for example). My drive is fairly full, and the space rapidly dwindles to zero without me noticing it. If I have a data partition, the partition fills up and the operation stops or fails, but that's it. If I'm doing it on my boot partition, I run out of swap space for the OS and likely cause at the very least more annoyig problems. Under 10.2, you could loose any number of preferences when this happened (been there more than once), and though 10.3 gives you more warning before falling apart, it's not too happy with near zero space on the boot drive, either.

Keeping my data on a seperate (and sadly always almost completely full) partition has saved me from disaster or annoyance countless times when my space management skills go lax.
 
Plissken said:
you mentioned partition, that urks me. people, once and for all having seperate partitions for OS and then data is stupid!!!!!!!! well, it is for the most part. i can't assume thats what you have setup here, but i thought i'd take the chance to rant. there is no good reason to have multiple partitiions. it wastes space and assumes you can perfectly judge how much disk space you will need in the future for a given partition.
Click to expand...
To tale your last argument first, some of us are fairly good judges of how much disk space is needed for stuff.

I do have two 180GB drives partitioned in my Powermac. On one disk there is a 62GB OS X/User partition that is about 45% full. The other partition on the disk is 118GB and contains assorted project stuff and is also about 44% full. Since the system is over a year old, it sounds like I did a fairly decent job of splitting that disk up. The other disk is split in half half photos I've taken and half MP3s from CDs I own (yes I own that many CDs) The Photos partition is 65% full and growing regularly. The MP3 partition is 72% full and not growing vary fast - it only grows when I buy another CD. When the Photos artiton gets full, I'll erase some of the photos I'm not working with anymore.

The reason for these splits? Every partition is on a different type of backup. Also, if I want to reinstall the OS (and applications) there is relatively little data I have to worry about restoring on the OS X partition.

Just because you don't see a need or reason for something, it doesn't mean there isn't a need or reason for it.

However as a bit on your side, if one has very little hard disk space, then partitioning the drive can run a person into issues of the available space being in the wrong partition.I also can't see putting too many partitions on a disk although as disks grow in size, I can see how more partitions might be useful - for example with a 400GB disk, I can see an OS and 2 to 4 project partitions.

Remember every bodies computer usage and knowledge varies.
 
well it is my fault for running out of space. i only made my boot partition 8GB because i wasn't planning on installing so many Apple apps (which have to be installed on the boot partition).

but i've got all other apps, Photoshop, Flash etc on another partition and it's much quicker when re-installing an OS, then there's another 3-4GB apps that i don't have to re-install.

about having seperate partitions for /Users & /usr/local... do you have a link that would explain how exactly to do that? and you'd only be able to use that for a re-install, not an install, right?
 
cb911 said:
about having seperate partitions for /Users & /usr/local... do you have a link that would explain how exactly to do that? and you'd only be able to use that for a re-install, not an install, right?
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the Apple installer doesn't let you set that up by default. My experience with doing that is from linux and openbsd installs. I'm not sure /local would be very useful as the Apple hierarchy is a bit messy to begin with (/sw might be useful if you use fink).

I looked into it briefly when I installed Panther, but decided it wasn't worth it for my usage pattern. I would think, if you want to do /Users, it would involve:

1) Create & format the partition
2) Edit /etc/fstab to specify the mount point at /Users (I know you can specify volume names in fstab on OSX, which solves the dynamic device issues)

You would have to be careful to remember to unmount it before an install (and maybe even comment out the fstab entry so it doesn't get automatically mounted)

But I really haven't looked into it on Panther.
 
i did not intend to imply that partitioning is stupid for everybody. i very well know it has some great uses and reading some of these posts has made me think about others. i do however stand firm that for the most part partitioning your OS and apps seperately from your "data" is pointless.
 
Is it safe to delete items from the reciepts directory if I've already removed the application? I deleted iDVD because my Powerbook doesn't have a Superdrive but the receipt is still in the directory. Is it still required?
 
Celeron said:
Is it safe to delete items from the reciepts directory if I've already removed the application? I deleted iDVD because my Powerbook doesn't have a Superdrive but the receipt is still in the directory. Is it still required?
Click to expand...

I believe you can safely delete it, but they're so small that it's not worth worrying about.
 
Nermal said:
I believe you can safely delete it, but they're so small that it's not worth worrying about.
Click to expand...
Actually if you've deleted the application, deleting the receipts that go along with it is a good idea. This way various utilities won't get confused about what is installed.
 
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