# can /var/db/freebsd-update/ be safely deleted?



## Anonymous (Aug 23, 2011)

Hi,

On my FreeBSD 8.2 system the directory /var/db/freebsd-update/ has grown up to 469 MByte. According to FREEBSD-UPDATE(8), this is the 





> Default location where freebsd-update stores temporary files and downloaded updates.



My preferred understanding of this is, that I may safely delete this directory, after I verified that the last freebsd-update is working well. Is this correct?

Best regards

Rolf


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## francis (Aug 26, 2011)

Hi, it seems that there is no problem with it if updates were successful. According to the other users opinions, You may have only one problem - with *rollback*. Otherwise, there should not be any problems. I will give You some links to webpages where You can find some more informations/answers on this topic; 
 freebsd-questions - /var/db/freebsd-update directory issue question about removing /var/db/freebsd-update directory
 freebsd-update - removing sources of a 7.2 system here, *swix* asking the same question and gets a satisfactory answer
 freebsd-update interupted an example of the interrupted process of the patches installation
On one of my computers running FreeBSD 8.1 (for typical desktop use, updates were done by using freebsd-update(8) utility), /var partition is filled to about 13%. There is already four patches for this release, right? So I think it is on such low level because I am using *cleanvar_enable* option (in /etc/rc.conf file). Best regards!


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## Anonymous (Aug 26, 2011)

Perfect.

I did remove the contents of the directory /var/db/freebsd-update, and I left the empty directory in place. Then I verified that the command "freebsd-update fetch" is still working, and still it is. Without surprise it reported that there are no updates available, and as a matter of fact, it populated said directory with some small maintenance files.

So, my conclusion is, that said directory should not be deleted, but may safely be emptied.

@francis, many thanks for your helpful response.

Best regards

Rolf


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