Overview

• Title : cylon-deb , Debian based Linux distribution maintenance program.

• Description: A TUI (terminal user interface) which allows users to carry out maintenance on an Debian based linux distributions. The program is menu-based and written in bash. The program is a fork and highly truncated version of the arch-linux maintenance program cylon, which can also be found in this repo. This program provides a Terminal based alternative to GUI software managers found in many distros.

• Author: Gavin Lyons

Table of contents

• Overview
• Table of contents
• Installation
• Usage
• Files
• Output and environment variables
• Dependencies
• Features
• Package Lists
• See Also

Installation

Two different install methods.

1. Install by PPA (Distros based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS )

A Personal Package Archives (PPA) has been created on Ubuntu package building and hosting section of launchpad site called cylondeb. Package built only for on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy JellyFish) 64bit To install this on your system run commands in terminal

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:typematrix/cylondeb
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cylondeb

OR

2. Install by makefile

Download latest fixed release and run the makefile as per terminal commands below for version 2.4 latest release at time of writing. You will not be informed of updates by system if you use this method.

curl -sL https://github.com/gavinlyonsrepo/cylon-deb/archive/2.4.tar.gz | tar xz
cd cylon-deb-2.4
sudo make install

Usage

Run in a terminal by typing:

cylondeb -[options]

Options list (standalone cannot be combined):

Option	Description
-h --help	Print cylondeb information and exit
-s --system	Print system information and exit
-v --version	Print version information and exit
-p --print	Print the package lists
-b --bleachbit	Shortcut to opens the bleachbit select menus

Files

File	Description
/usr/bin/cylondeb	The main shell script
/usr/lib/cylondeb/modules/*	Module files containing functions
/usr/share/doc/cylondeb/README.md	Help file
/usr/share/doc/copyright	copyright file
/usr/share/pixmaps/cylondebicon.png	program icon
/usr/share/applications/cylondeb.desktop	desktop entry file

Output and environment variables

CYLONDEST is an optional custom environmental variable used by program. If variable CYLONDEST is not set or does not exist, cylon uses the default path. Most system output (logfiles, downloads and updates etc) is placed at below path, unless otherwise specified on screen. Output folders are created with following time/date stamp syntax HHMM-DDMONYY-X where X is output type i.e download, update etc. The default path is:

$HOME/Documents/cylondeb

Optional Dependencies

Some functions require dependencies packages to be installed. These optional dependencies are left to user discretion. The user can check if optional dependencies installed with cylondeb help.

Dependencies	Usage
aptitude	High-level interface to the package manager APT
deborphan	Orphaned package finder
debsums	Verify the integrity of installed package files
ppa-purge	Disables a PPA and reverts to official packages
bleachbit	System clean and shredding

Features

The features are split into two main sections.

Section one deals with system maintenance. The options here are divided into 3 menus. Menu one deals with routine package maintenance upgrading, installing, searching etc. Menu two deals with more advanced options such as removing obsolete and orphaned packages, Exercise care and make backups and copys of the "packagelists" before using these options. Menu 3 deals has some general linux maintenance options as well as a CLI wrapper for bleachbit. BleachBit is a free and open-source disk space cleaner, privacy manager, and computer system optimizer.

Section 2 is the miscellaneous section it mainly contains cylon and system information displays.

1: System update section

• Menu one options
  • Check for updates (no download), aptitude search '~U'
  • Upgrade all, apt update && apt dist-upgrade
  • Display remote package information, apt-cache show
  • Install Package, apt install
  • Delete Package, apt remove
  • Search for packages in the database, apt search
  • Search for already installed packages, aptitude search '~i'
  • Display info for locally installed packages, dpkg -s
  • List all files owned by a given package, dpkg -L
  • Write installed package lists to files (see package list section)
  • View dpkg log file at /var/log/dpkg.log
  • Show all or most information about a package, apt show
  • Show the changelog of a package, apt-get changelog
  • Verify all packages, debsums
  • Verify dependencies of the complete system, apt-get check
  • Add a PPA to system, add-apt-repository ppa:
  • Purge a PPA from system, ppa-purge

Warning

Some of these options in menu 2 remove unwanted and unneeded packages and configs from system as identified by utilities. What will be removed is presented to user first. Please take care especially with deborphan options numbered 3 <-> 6. These have not been tested on all debian type distros. Options 3 to 6 should only be used with caution by advanced users.

• Menu two options

  • Clean up all local cache, apt autoclean
  • Removes pkgs installed by other pkgs & no longer needed, apt autoremove
  • Remove pkg's no longer included in any repos, aptitude purge '~o'
  • Remove orphan packages with orphaner tool
  • Remove orphaned packages automatically, sudo deborphan | xargs sudo apt-get -y remove --purge
  • Removing packages and configurations which are not required by any other package upon your system, deborphan -n --find-config | xargs apt-get -y purge
  • delete contents of CYLONDEST output folder

• Menu 3 options

  • All Failed Systemd Services and system status
  • All Failed Active Systemd Services
  • Check log Journalctl for Errors
  • Check log Journalctl for fstrim SSD trim (check for SSD in system)
  • Analyze system boot-up performance
  • Check for broken symlinks
  • Check for files not owned by any user or group
  • Diskspace usage
  • Old configuration files scan, output to files
  • Find system inode usage
  • Find largest files
  • Print sensors information
  • Vacuum journal files
  • Delete core dumps
  • delete files
    • Shred specific files with bleachbit
    • Shred specific folders with bleachbit
  • Clean system with bleachbit (also run by -b standalone option.)
    • Preset option based on the same options as in the GUI
    • Custom options involved for user to pick cleaners and options
      • preview
      • clean (without overwrite, BB checks the config in GUI).
      • clean + overwrite (with overwrite permanent deletion)
  • List all open files

2: Miscellaneous section

• Option to open xterm terminal at output folder path in new window

• Computer system information display

  • Displays detailed information on system and package setup
  • Function also run by -s standalone option.

• Cylon information:

  • Dependencies installation check, info and display readme file to screen
  • Function can also run by option -h

Package Lists

Index	Contents	Filename
1	All installed	All_PKG
2	All native, explicitly installed	Exp_PKG
3	List orphaned packages	noinstall_PKG
4	Get a dump of the whole system information	stats_PKG
5	List packages that were recently added to one of the installation sources	Recent_add_PKG
6	List packages not required by any other package	non-Dep_PKG
7	List packages installed automatically (as dependencies)	auto_Dep_PKG
8	Prints a list of all installation source	Info_Source_PKG
9	List of non-standard repositories in use	non_standard_PKG
10	List Installed packages by size	install_size_PKG
11	List packages by install date	Install_date_1_PKG
12	List packages by install date less data	Install_date_2_PKG

Commands used by index number in table:

1. dpkg --list | grep "^i"
2. apt-mark showmanual
3. deborphan
4. apt-cache stats
5. aptitude search '~N'
6. deborphan -anp1
7. apt-mark showauto
8. apt-cache policy
9. cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list | grep -v "^#"
10. aptitude search "~i" --display-format "%p %I" --sort installsize
11. grep installed /var/log/dpkg.log
12. grep " install " /var/log/dpkg.log

See Also

• aptitude
• apt
• dpkg
• deborphan
• debsums
• ppa-purge
• bleachbit