Recently I have seen one issue with a cache problem. The problem comes with broken hash and that could be fixed with

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

and

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf

But I am not understanding the difference between these two. Can somebody explain the difference?

1

2 Answers

from the man Page:

-r, -R, --recursive

remove directories and their contents recursively i.e. Folders inside them will be removed also.

-v, --verbose

explain what is being done or show what is happening.

For the -f

-f, --force ignore nonexistent files, never prompt

You will not be promoted whether to remove the file or not. In other words: You will not be asked this question "Do you want to remove the files? Yes or No"

0

-rf:

• The -r argument stands for "recursive." It will remove what you ask, as well as all files and directories underneath it.
• The -f argument stands for "force." It will ignore nonexistent files and never prompt.

-vf:

• The -f again stands for "force."
• The -v argument stands for "verbose." It will print all items it deletes.

The biggest difference is this: -rf will remove all files and directories under the location you asked for, and print nothing. -vf will NOT remove non-empty directories and print everything it does delete.

Note that this information comes from the man page:

$ man rm

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