E: Clean of / is not supported

Question

When i try command like sudo apt-get autoclean or sudo apt-get clean i get an error E: Clean of / is not supported.

$ sudo apt-get autoclean
Reading Package Lists ... Done
Building the dependency tree
Reading status information ... Done
E: Clean of / is not supported

$ apt-config dump | fgrep Dir::Cache
Dir::Cache "";
Dir::Cache::archives "";
Dir::Cache::srcpkgcache "srcpkgcache.bin";
Dir::Cache::pkgcache "pkgcache.bin";

I'm using Linux Mint

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=LinuxMint
DISTRIB_RELEASE=18
DISTRIB_CODENAME=sarah
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 18 Sarah"

Any suggestion to fix that please ?

Answer 1

You have modified your apt configuration:

Dir::Cache "";
Dir::Cache::archives "";

Here are the correct values:

Dir::Cache "var/cache/apt/";
Dir::Cache::archives "archives/";

Since apt prepends a / to Dir::Cache, it is refusing to clean/ as reported in its error message. Fix your configuration in /etc/apt/apt.conf and/or /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*