[NTLUG:Discuss] / filling up, again.

[terry]

Wayne Dahl wrote:

>Hi guys,
>
>I really hate to ask this again as I had this problem a couple of months
>ago and now it's back.  I have no idea what to do about it.  Last time,
>I was able to clear out some stuff from / that enabled me to open up
>some space, but now I have no idea what else to look for.  I have a 40
>Gig drive I have Linux on on this box and I have the / partition set up
>as 341.8 Megs of it.  The last time I attempted to do an upgrade of the
>kernal, I got an error message saying / needed 15+ Megs of space and I'm
>now down to 13.9.  
>
>Someone last time suggested I look (I think) in /etc for files being
>installed I don't need.  Trouble is, I don't know what's in there that I
>don't actually need.  What should I look for?  Redundant files, old
>libraries that I no longer need, etc?  How would I tell what I need and
>what I don't?
>
>I realize I may be asking the impossible but I'm not sure what else to
>do.  I am enclosing the partition information for you so you'll know how
>I have this hard drive split up.  
>
>For background, this box is a dual boot into Win98 and RH 8.0.  It
>originally had a 6 Gig drive in it that I've partitioned into vfat (3.8
>Gigs for Win98) and the rest as a the boot partition for Linux.  I also
>used some other space for some of the other partitions.  So my partition
>info is given below...
>
>/dev/hda1  vfat   3.8 GB    /mnt/hda1
>/dev/hda2        53.2 MB   /boot
>/dev/hda3        509.6 MB  /swap
>/dev/hda5        341.8 MB  /
>/dev/hda6        1.3 GB    /tmp
>/dev/hdc1        2.2 GB    /var
>/dev/hdc2        3.8 GB    /opt
>/dev/hdc3        2.4 GB    /usr/local
>/dev/hdc5        2.4 GB    /usr/src
>/dev/hdc6        13.5 GB   /home
>/dev/hdc7        13.5 GB   /usr
>
>Incidentally, why is there no /dev/hda4 or /dev/hdc4?  Why does the
>system skip hdx4 when setting up partitions? 
>

Long story, but an important one to know...  As you probably already 
know, current BIOS limitations are such that we can really only have 4 
partitions.  In order to work around this limitation, we make the 4th 
partition what we call an "extended" partition that will contain all the 
other pusedo partitois within that 4th partition.  We call these psuedo 
partitions "logical" partitions.  That'll give us  up to a total of 
sixteen as logical partitions inside the extended one [partition 4].   
(Psuedo is not a good term, just used it for sake of argument.)

If you look at
# fdisk -l /dev/hda
&
# fdisk -l /dev/hdc
you'll probably see that 4th partition listed there.  And if you look at 
the size of it in comparrison to the ones numbered 5 and above you'll 
realize that it's the culmination of those higher numbered "logical" 
partitions.  And then if you look at the start and end of partition 4, 
you'll also see that it covers the space occupied by logical partitions 
5 and above.

>
>Boot I can deal with by deleting old kernals and sources I no longer
>need.  But / I have no idea what to do with.
>
>Thanks for your input.
>
>Wayne
>
>
>  
>
(Assuming you've used all your IDE ports),  What I would do, is make appropriate partitions on a larger drive and replace the 6gig with it and move stuff to it as needed.

To do that, you'd have to take out the 40 gig., put in the new drive, boot to a boot disk with some necessary utilities, like Toms rbt or Linuxcare bootable CD, make the necessary partitions, format them as needed, copy the stuff from your 6 gig. drive to the new one, edit /etc/fstab as/if needed, remove the 6 gig., move the new drive to it's proper position, put the 40 gig back in and finish shuffeling things to where they need to be and that should do it.

See: http://sxs.iqchoice.com/housekeeping/newones.html

FYI:  I've taken to leaving an unpartitioned portion of one of my drives for expansion purposes.

-- 
Registered Linux User #188099
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