NEILB's Blog

PAUSE ran out of diskspace this weekend, so we're asking everyone to delete old releases from their author directory. Every release you do to CPAN stays in your author directory until you choose to delete it. Sometimes you might want your old releases to stay available, but most of the time you could happily delete them (they're always available on BackPAN). Below I'll explain how you can do this.

Deleting via the PAUSE interface

You can delete old releases via the PAUSE web interface:

• Log in to PAUSE
• Click on "Delete Files" in the left sidebar
• You'll get a list of all files in your author directory, each with a checkbox next to it
• Click on the checkboxes next to files from old versions of your distributions
• Click on the "Delete" button

This schedules the files for deletion in 3 days, and the page updates to show you which files have been scheduled for deletion. Double check that didn't accidentally select the latest release of anything.

Command-line tools

ETHER's pause-cleanup script

To make your life easier, Rik Signes (RJBS) wrote a command-line too, which David Golden then hacked on (XDG/DAGOLDEN), and Karen Etheridge (ETHER) further modified it. Download Karen's script and then run it like this:

pause-cleanup 1 NEILB NotMyRealPassword

The first argument says the number of releases to retain for each distribution: if you gave 2 then it would leave the latest release, and the one before. Then give your PAUSE id and your PAUSE password. You can create a .pause file in your home directory (remember to chmod 600 .pause):

user NEILB
password NotMyRealPassword

And then you can just run

pause-cleanup 1

If you're a regular releaser, pop that in a crontab to run on the 1st day of every month:

17 07 1 * * /usr/local/bin/pause-cleanup 1

This says to run the script a 07:17 on the 1st day of every month.

YANICK's pause-cleanup script

You can install this one from CPAN, by installing App::PAUSE::cleanup, and then run:

pause-cleanup

It will drop you into your preferred text editor on a file with details of your PAUSE directory.

This was written by Robert Krimen but is now maintained by Yanick Champoux.

New host for PAUSE

The NOC are going to be setting up a new host for PAUSE later this year, which will have more diskspace, but in the meantime, please help out by tidying up your directory.