1 # What packages use the most disk space?
   2 dpkg-query -W -f='${Installed-Size;10}\t${Package}\n' | sort -n
   3 
   4 # Reinstall conf files
   5 sudo dpkg -i --force-confmiss /var/cache/apt/archives/whatever*deb
   6 sudo aptitude install -o 'Dpkg::Options::=--force-confmiss' whatever # Doesn't work?
   7

Building packages

If using dpkg-buildpackage to build a customized package (one for which you've not made a formal patch), you may get an error that looks like: 

dpkg-source: info: using source format `3.0 (quilt)'
dpkg-source: info: building cairo using existing ./cairo_1.13.0~20140204.orig.tar.xz
dpkg-source: info: local changes detected, the modified files are:
 cairo-1.13.0~20140204/src/cairo-ft-font.c
dpkg-source: info: you can integrate the local changes with dpkg-source --commit
dpkg-source: error: aborting due to unexpected upstream changes, see /tmp/cairo_1.13.0~20140204-0ubuntu1.diff.Rho4ow
dpkg-buildpackage: error: dpkg-source -b cairo-1.13.0~20140204 gave error exit status 2

This is because dpkg-buildpackage wants to create a source package, but with an unexpected change a source package may get built that does not match the binary. To fix this, pass the '-b' option to only build a binary: 

   1 dpkg-buildpackage -b

CategoryCheatSheet