Is it safe to delete older update packages?

I was looking to free up some disk space.

If you're so tight on disk space that you're looking to trim system files, you need to get a larger hard drive. Trimming the system is not a good idea, especially if you don't know what you're doing. And, no offense, but by at least one of the things you're asking to delete, you don't know what you're doing, in this particular area.

I'm currently running 10.6.4 but there are very large update packages from the updates for 10.6.3 and 10.6.2. I'm wondering if it's safe to delete the oldest package (10.6.2).

Where are you seeing that? If you downloaded these updates from Apple's web site, rather than via Software Update, and still have the installers in your downloads folder, then yes, you can delete any of those that have been installed. If that's not what you're looking at, you're going to need to specify exactly what files you're talking about.

There are also close to 4 GB of swapfiles under /private/vm. Are those safe to delete?

Only if your intent is to screw up your computer. Never delete anything from the invisible Unix folders at the root of your hard drive unless you absolutely, 100% for sure know what they are and that it's safe.

Where are these packages? If they are the updaters that you used previously they yes you can delete them.

If they are receipts that are in your HD/Library/Receipts folder then you have to be a little careful. Deleting them won't affect your Powerbook's performance but it will mess up future updates. Those receipts are what tell Software Update and the standalone updater packages what needs to be updates. With all of the receipts removed you'll be told that all apps and the system need to be updated.

If you have receipts like iPhoto 8.0.1, 8.0.2, 8.0.3 you can delete all but the last. Just be careful. I always manually update and upgrade getting them from the Apple Downloads page.

Regarding swapfiles if you use the Archive and Install, Mac OS X: About the Archive and Install feature, method those will be cleared out because an entirely new system is installed.

You should try to maintain a minimum of 10 GB minimum of free space for optimum system and application performance. More is your iDVD.

You can recover a fair amount of disk space by running Monolingual to remove all unneeded language modules except for English and your native language.

Again DO NOT REMOVE English. I keep it and English (American). I recovered about 1GB of file space the first time I ran it on my MBP. A lot will depend on the number of apps you have.

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Do not use any of the other functions available in Monolingual. Too risky.

OT

In Snow Leopard, HD/Library/Receipts/ is no longer the repository for bom and plist files used for permissions repair and software updates. Those are stored in /var/db/receipts/. These should be the only things needed in HD/Library/Receipts/:

InstallHistory.plist
Modular Software Download.plist

The first is the listing of what's been installed (the Apple stuff displays in the installed software window of Software Update) and the second lists additional software preinstalled at the factory. On my machine that was iWork.

We won't have a Modular Software Download.plist if the computer came with an earlier system.

However, the packages are needed for 3rd party applications, right? So those must be culled very carefully if at all.

Bottomline: all Apple receipts can be removed from the Receipts folder but not for 3rd party apps.

Message was edited by: Old Toad

Correct. My reading of the modular plist indicates it was created when Apple preinstalled iWork on this machine. AFAICT, although 3rd-party apps might still install packages there (HP usually does that when installing their software), they serve no useful purpose. I've just deleted all those I inherited when migrating from my previous Leopard installation on another Mac. Any new ones, I've moved into a Packages subfolder and that affects nothing.

library (NOT system/library)/updates/zz061-8025(a folder) contains the OS update .pkg (800MB!) plus several other .pkgs.

I'm not entirely sure what those are for, but unless someone else says it's okay to delete those, I wouldn't touch them.

I have a feeling that those [VM swap files] are deletable but I didn't want to do it without checking.

As I said, that feeling is wrong. You should not delete those.

I'm using DiskSweeper to find large files for potential deletion in case that matters to anyone.

Stay clear of anything outside your user folder. Unless you're having a serious issue with running out of space, you shouldn't mess with the system just out of some desire to optimize things. If you are running out of space, then the solution is not to trim your system. That's a purely temporary fix, and typically doesn't last long if you've got so much user data it's filling the drive. The right fix in that case is to get a bigger drive.

If in /Library/Updates/, those are installer remnants, and you can safely delete them. Software Update usually deletes them after applying the update. Sometimes the installer mucks that up. Just leave the ProductMetadata.plist alone.

Using Monolingual can cause Microsoft Office updaters to fail.

Yes. The swapfiles are deleted upon restart. So don't delete them manually, just restart.