Here are some notes about various packages that I've installed in Raspbian with apt.
By default, nmap installs a ton of additional stuff which is not appropriate for a console-only machine. This is due to the fact that, by default, apt installs "recommended" packages as well as "required" packages. This is resolved by either using apt-get --no-install-recommends install nmap or putting the following lines in /etc/apt/apt.conf:
APT::Install-Recommends "0";
APT::Install-Suggests "0";
Question found at: apt-get installing unnecessary packages and the solution there links to Tip: Tell apt-get not to install “recommends” packages in Debian Linux.
By default, transmission-daemon spews tons of text into /var/log/syslog. To resolve, create the file /etc/rsyslog.d/transmission.conf containing the following lines:
:programname,isequal,"transmission-daemon" /var/log/transmission.log
:programname,isequal,"transmission-daemon" ~
To ensure that the log file is rotated regularly, in /etc/logrotate.d/rsyslog, under the "/var/log/messages" line, add:
/var/log/transmission.log