I'd mostly call myself a "regular user" -- although I do have a web server installed on my laptop it doesn't broadcast to the world...it's just me the couch and the tv and occassionally the cat. I choose not to worry about things like security and the latest and greatest versions of things (although I am running unstable).
I've found my current disk set up to be quite satisfactory until today when I couldn't pick up mail. /var had run out of space. /var/share is new as of tonight to deal with an otherwise quite usable disk configuration. I believe I came up with these numbers from a Red Hat book, although many people have included their disk partition sizes on their web sites. I know only of the linux laptop site, but many of the people who've contributed info have included disk partition information: http://www.linux-laptop.net/ Here's mine: emmajane@debian:~$ df -h (-h = human readable sizes) Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 464M 28M 412M 7% / /dev/hda3 4.6G 2.1G 2.4G 47% /home /dev/hda5 2.3G 1.3G 901M 60% /usr /dev/hda6 464M 108M 333M 25% /var /dev/hda7 2.8G 46M 2.6G 2% /usr/local /dev/hda9 46M 13M 31M 30% /tmp /dev/hda10 2.3G 334M 1.9G 15% /var/cache /dev/hda1 is a windows partition that's barely big enough to hold Windows 2000 and a couple pieces of software. It's there in case of very desperate times (like when I need to use a modem). When I first installed debian I was actually replacing a RedHat installation. All the partitions were reformatted (and possibly resized) EXCEPT for /home. I also left about 6Gb free (unformatted). This has been a total god-send. For example: I didn't realize that /var/cache/apt/archives would hold a copy of all my install files for software. On RedHat /usr/local needs to be huge (I'm anti-rpm and did everything from scratch), on debian with .debs it's different. So today I filled up /var. Based on some great advice that got here I decided to find the largest subdirectory and make a new partition just for that directory. This freed up a good chunk of space (75% of the partition) to be shared in the other sub-directories. A number of people recommended cleaning out /var...464M isn't a lot to begin with. I have virtually no logs and no mail. As you can see, there wasn't a lot to clean out: debian:/home/emmajane# du --max-depth=1 -h /var 12K /var/lost+found 75M /var/lib 334M /var/cache 2.8M /var/backups 1.0K /var/local 1.0K /var/lock 21M /var/log 40K /var/run 9.9M /var/spool 10K /var/tmp 1.0K /var/opt 1.0K /var/mail 10K /var/www 441M /var (Note that the size of /var/cache is approximately the same size as /dev/hda10 from above? This is because I moved /var/cache into that partition but du reads it as if it were all the same...I think.) This is how I put some of my unformatted space to good use. I believe I've remembered all of the steps. Hopefully someone will correct me if I've got glaring errors. du --max-depth=1 -h /dir_in_question find the largest directory and replace it with a new partition apt-get install parted program to make partitions with tar -cvf /home/emmajane/var.tar /var backup whatever directory you're about to manipulate. In my case backup all your data and config files to CD (or external drive) mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda10 create an ext2 partition named whatever the next partition would be in your sequence. You can do this in "parted" but I didn't understand how. vi /etc/fstab copy pasted the partition information for /var and created: /dev/hda10 /var/cache ext2 defaults 0 2 I don't really understand what all the numbers mean, but I do understand you need this for the partition to be mounted when you boot your computer e2label /dev/hda10 /var/share I'm not sure this was required, but it was part of the instructions in: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/custom-guide/s1-parted-create-part.html cp /var/cache /var/cache2 extra backups never hurt parted at this point we're just looking. type: print This will show you all your partitions. Mine looks like this: Using /dev/hda Information: The operating system thinks the geometry on /dev/hda is 3648/255/63. Therefore, cylinder 1024 ends at 8032.499M. (parted) print Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-28615.781 megabytes Disk label type: msdos Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags 1 0.031 2000.280 primary ntfs boot 2 2000.281 2478.779 primary ext2 3 2478.779 7248.076 primary ext2 4 7248.076 20175.380 extended 5 7248.107 9632.724 logical ext2 6 9632.755 10111.223 logical ext2 7 10111.254 12974.370 logical ext2 8 12974.401 13452.868 logical linux-swap 9 13452.899 13499.934 logical ext2 10 13499.965 20175.380 logical ext2 That was fun. Now type "quit" and take a deep breath. Good. Let's continue. parted /dev/hda10 starts the program "parted" and tells it to use the /dev/hda10 partition which is currently unformatted Type "print" and notice the output is different. The minor number is different and the Start and End bits are different. That's ok! Mine looks like this: Using /dev/hda10 (parted) print Disk geometry for /dev/hda10: 0.000-6675.416 megabytes Disk label type: loop Minor Start End Filesystem Flags 1 0.000 6675.416 ext2 I'm not convinced this next step worked; however, the partition is the right size under df -h, so who am I to argue? Find a partition that is the approximate size you'd like to have. Subtract the "end" from the "start" to get the total number of whatever those things are...cyclinders? Locations? Who knows. Get the number. Then type: resize 1 0.000 whateverthenumberis that's resize minor# start end I have a feeling I forgot to write down a step in here. Let me know if you know what it is.... If you haven't done all the backups requested at the very beginning, do them now. I can wait. rm -Rf /path/to/new/partition (e.g. /var/cache) Check to make sure the dir is empty! mount /path/to/new/partition copy /path/to/new/partition2 back into /path/to/new/partition delete the backup. You've got another copy of this in a tar file if you need it. When you mount a partition on top of a directory with files it "hides" the files, but doesn't replace them. This basically means you've got double the files in that one directory but one copy is hidden from you. Check df -h to see that your original top level dir now contains fewer files. If it's at the same size then you haven't done something correctly. I used the following resources: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/custom-guide/ch-disk-storage.html (There are four or five pages there which you'll want to read. Just use the next button until you get to the beginning of the next section.) Hopefully this was helpful for someone. :) emma -- Emma Jane Hogbin [[ 416 417 2868 ][ www.xtrinsic.com ]] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
