[sf-lug] NEED INFO ABOUT BOOT SECTOR, SPACE LIMITS

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alex Kleider (akleider at sonic.net):

> The problem I was trying to solve is that the long lines get carried
> over to the next line so the ability to scan down columns is
> disrupted by 'spilled' lines.  Your
> COLUMNS=$COLUMNS dpkg -l | less
> command fixes that...

Glad it helped!  It's a tip I picked up somewhere that makes the rounds, 
so the problem appears to be common.

As Michael P. points out, and as I did in one of the command-line strings 
we use at www.svlug.org to purge unneeded 'rc' (run-control, which is to
say configuration) files from removed packages, the output of 'dpkg -l' 
can be usefully fed through filtering, awk, etc. to do useful package
reporting and other operations.

Among other things, you start noticing things that have been building up
that (it turns out) your system really doesn't need, like five or six
obsolete versions of Python -- and get a chance to get rid of those.

If it turns out that you shouldn't have, you can also reinstall them. 
Don't forget, package operations get neatly logged.  Look, for example 
(as the root user), at /var/log/apt/history.log and /var/log/apt/term.log.
All that information you worried would be lost forever as it flew past
while apt-get does its work is all there, for posterity.