Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Tom Brinkman wrote: I've never understood the desire to maintain a /home dir, specially thru future installs and upgrades. Using a stale old /home WILL 'lead to lots of problems' by introducing extraneous, deprecated, often maliciously conflicting (specially config) files into newer upgrades and/or versions. Keep a backup of /home, introduce personal files or customizations back in slowly, one at a time, watching for problems. It's the same basis as the reasons that fresh installs are always a safer bet than upgrades, any OS. From personal experience, I have to agree with Tom here. Everytime I've kept my /home folder, and migrated/upgraded to a newer Mandrake version, I've had problems...that were always fixed by backing up all my important stuff, and doing a full and clean install, including formatting -all- my 'Nix partitions. Like Tom said, YMMV... ;-) -- /\ DarkLord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD? ot now I've never understood the desire to maintain a /home dir,
On Saturday 01 December 2001 16:07, you wrote: snip I've never understood the desire to maintain a /home dir, specially thru future installs and upgrades. I can give you my reason. I like to see the difference in different levels of installs and have (more than once) bothched my install or upgrade (while NOT changing the distro version) so badly that in order to use the box at all I had to reinstall, and having all the personal configs there has been a good thing for me. just my $00.002 worth Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
On Sunday 02 December 2001 09:46, you wrote: Mr. Eds Brittanys wrote: Is there an advantage to booting to console rather than to the graphical login? Darklord wrote: If you have an Nvidia video card, you have to avoid KDM and login manually, otherwise, you lose 3D acceleration in games... ;-( It's not just Nvidia cards--for sure Voodoo cards won't load 3D games either--and thanks again for clueing me in on that Darklord. KDM crashes open GL! eryl Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name=message.footer Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Description: Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
On Saturday 01 December 2001 01:04 am, Mr. Eds Brittanys wrote: I did it this time. I couldn't log in this morning at all. Rec. the msg: exited with non-zero status Please contact your system administrator. I guess I'm the sys admin and since I don't know anything, it was time to panic. This is what I have: /dev/hda5 3.4G 2.7G 525M 84% / /dev/hda7 14G 361M 13G 3% /home /dev/hda1 19G 6.4G 13G 33% /mnt/windows Lori Your best bet is to reinstall. Next time giving / a lot more space, and /home a lot less. OR, just avoid the issue altogether and install everything in one big / . You could do this on hda7 and keep hda5 for storing backups of /home and other stuff. Good setup for a single user desktop. -- Tom Brinkman Galveston Bay, USA Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Is it safe to delete most everything in the /tmp directorys? And what else is safe to delete to free up space? This is what I have: /dev/hda5 3.4G 2.7G 525M 84% / /dev/hda7 14G 361M 13G 3% /home /dev/hda1 19G 6.4G 13G 33% /mnt/windows Taking the advice of Michael: If any % is higher than about 75-80%, it's usually time to take a look to see where you can free up some room. I would like to lower that 84% somehow. What options do I have? Thanks a ton. This list has been a life saver. Lori There are a few places to look, most of /tmp can be cleaned out (except files pertaining to X, since if you are running X, and you delete those files, X might lockup), you can also look in /var/log (anything with .gz or .1, .2, .3, etc can be removed), and also in /var/spool/mail (since there are a lot of things that root will receive from cron jobs that occur periodically). Michael -- Michael Viron Registered Linux User #81978 Senior Systems Administration Consultant Web Spinners, University of West Florida Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Your best bet is to reinstall. Next time giving / a lot more space, and /home a lot less. OR, just avoid the issue altogether and I'd have to disagree. Look at the df report - she only has 3% used in /home. Sure, home could be lessened but I don't think that's the issue here. 525megs (what is left on /) should be enough space and I doubt the login problem is an issue. What could be at issue is not enough inodes if a particular file can't be created during a login process, or maybe per- missions (one reason to wonder if she could log in as root but not as a regular user). install everything in one big / . You could do this on hda7 and Not a very good idea. That could lead to lots of problems. One should at least segregate /home onto another partition, and it makes good sense to have multiple partitions. A drawback of course to that approach is that the new person doesn't really have a good idea of the space requirements for the various partitions. Having separate partitions facilitates upgrading too - I can keep my local stuff out of the way of Mandrake for instance. keep hda5 for storing backups of /home and other stuff. Good setup for a single user desktop. I went for a rather large / for that reason, and it's a good one. Saves wear and tear on the tape drive :). In converting over to reiserfs there's enough room to tar up a 5gig /home among other things :). Tom Brinkman Galveston Bay, USA Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Mr. Eds Brittanys wrote: Is it safe to delete most everything in the /tmp directorys? And what else is safe to delete to free up space? You can set things so that /tmp is cleaned out everytime you boot up. Thats what I do... -- /\ DarkLord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
On Saturday 01 December 2001 03:09 pm, dfox wrote: Your best bet is to reinstall. Next time giving / a lot more space, and /home a lot less. OR, just avoid the issue altogether and I'd have to disagree. Look at the df report - she only has 3% used in /home. Sure, home could be lessened but I don't think that's the issue here. 525megs (what is left on /) should be enough space and In my experience any OS starts havin problems when partitions become 80+% full. YMMV install everything in one big / . You could do this on hda7 and Not a very good idea. That could lead to lots of problems. One should at least segregate /home onto another partition, and it You might remember I suggested this only for a single user desktop, and keeping a seperate bakup of /home. The idea of installing Linux on multiple partitions, or all in one big / is an endless, often politically religious debate. Been going on forever I've never understood the desire to maintain a /home dir, specially thru future installs and upgrades. Using a stale old /home WILL 'lead to lots of problems' by introducing extraneous, deprecated, often maliciously conflicting (specially config) files into newer upgrades and/or versions. Keep a backup of /home, introduce personal files or customizations back in slowly, one at a time, watching for problems. It's the same basis as the reasons that fresh installs are always a safer bet than upgrades, any OS. Multiple partitions does make sense on a multi user or server system. Mostly for security concerns which aren't valid on a single user system. Again, YMMV -- Tom Brinkman Galveston Bay, USA Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
I did it this time. I couldn't log in this morning at all. Rec. the msg: exited with non-zero status Please contact your system administrator. Yeah, did you ring yourself up? :) Yea. And therein lies the problem. The sys admin, aka I, didn't know what I was doing. It was when I found reference to the 'df' in the archives that I knew to look. At the time I was getting the error msg, it was at 100%. The only way I could get anywhere was to go thru failsafe and login as root in text mode. And yes, I was in a panic. What I found was 8 files in /var/log, which when deleted, took me from 100% to 84%. I have no idea what they were or why they were there. Looking briefly at your 'df' report, there *should* be enough space so that the message should not appear - I don't think that the message in itself is space related. Your / is at 84% which is all right; if it was at 100% I'd panic. Were you able to login as root and not as a user? The system does leave some space reserved as root just for cases like this. file and not being able to access DrakConf and I can email again so they were all related afterall. If you have a rather large inbox you need space in order to store a backup copy of it, depending on what mail reader you use. That may not be of issue here but it's something I run up against from time to time when I use 'elm'. A general tip - you can use 'du' on parts of your / filesystem to find out where the space is being used, and then attempt to figure out what to get rid of. And what else is safe to delete to free up space? the system usually takes care of that for you - although in one recent instance, when I was installing a corrupt copy of StarOffice 6, my /var partition filled all the way up because of a runaway logging process :(. StarOffice may be what created this problem. Those 8 log files were listed as one of the users. He only uses LM when he needs to write a report or something, and that's pretty limited. How did yuo install Mandrake? Did you select everything, or did you use a smaller subset of 'everything'? If you did 'everything' there are a few things you can remove safely, such as documentation, since you can read the docs on the CDs. Back when I was running redhat, I found loads of different Howto's and other documents in different languages, and in different formats (dvi, ps, html, etc.) and that was a waste of disk resources. I managed to free up over 60 megs of stuff by getting rid of that stuff. Why did you switch from redhat? Just curious. Everything is installed but I didn't install it. When I bought this puter, I asked them to install Linux and he recommended LM. Maybe if I would have done it myself, I'd know more but my line of thinking was if I got frustrated with the installation process, I'd scrap the whole thing but if I had a working system to cut my teeth on. It takes longer to learn but I can learn a little at a time and not be so overwhelmed. And you wouldn't believe the number of people who tried to talk me out of trying linux. It's not without headaches and scary moments but at least it can be fixed. I didn't know just how much I hated windoze. The rebooting and rebooting and rebooting. And when something messed up you hoped a reboot would fix it. It's funny tho, I didn't know I could get so excited about a computer. It's great having somewhere to get info and tap all these brains. Maybe one of these days someone can tap my brain. Thanks Lori Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
to have filled up your root partition. All the better to have /var off by itself on another partitiion somewhere. Normally, of course, that shouldn't happen; something must have caused a runaway log. For 'regular' workstations those logs should be only a few megs apiece. They were except for those few files I mentioned. About failsafe in particular: I don't pretty much like Mandrake's idea of graphical login, which even goes as far to elide the need for passwords at times. To each their own, but I prefer actually having to login at a login: prompt. And, I've always booted up in console mode, using startx to get to X. Is there an advantage to booting to console rather than to the graphical login? I've only used console mode in 'emergencies'. I have an 11 yr old who will only use Linux so the graphical login is easier for her to use. I had just gotten DSL... Only in my dreams. And for what it's worth - I don't know if you're running with ext2 or reiserfs, but another way to add a lot of extra space is to switch to reiserfs. I didn't expect it at all, but I converted some of my filesystems over to reiserfs earlier today, and /home, which was a 5gig filesystem and was almost full, now has 900 megs free. The same is true for /usr/local, another 5 gig partition. It wasn't as full as /home, but there's a lot more room there now. I figure that's due to not needing inodes and such. Probably though there's got to be some reserved room for the journal - what happens when that gets full? ext2 So how many partitions do you actually have then? I thought this was a good idea: Lanman wrote: I'd like to suggest that you break your /home partition into 2 partitions. Typically, DiskDrake will setup 3 partitions (ie; / , swap, and /home), but I suggest a fourth partition which can be used as an archive (read as storage) partition. But you took this further yet? So how many partitions would be reasonably possible? your other email: it makes good sense to have multiple partitions. A drawback of course to that approach is that the new person doesn't really have a good idea of the space requirements for the various partitions. Makes sense to me but additionally, the new person doesn't really have an idea as to what can be partitioned alone and what can't. Lori Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
But you took this further yet? So how many partitions would be reasonably possible? The last system I installed on was a server, 3 sep. IDE hard drives, which had a combined total of 46.4 GB worth of space. I partitioned the 6.4 GB as a system drive (/, /var, /tmp, /usr, and swap) The two 20 GB drives are partitioned as large 20 GB reiserfs partitions mounted at /home and /backup. Michael -- Michael Viron Registered Linux User #81978 Senior Systems Administration Consultant Web Spinners, University of West Florida Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Hi there are 2 commands worth looking at they are: du and df Type man du and man df to see the syntax, HTH ___ Robert MacLean - Original Message - From: Neville Cobb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Linux Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 2:00 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD? I too am used to the tools of windows and have found that xdiskusage useful in linux as it shows disk usage in a graph for a selected partition. You'll need to install egcs-c++ rpm as well and you'll need to run it as root. You can use the binary at this location just change the permissions to execute, install egcs-c++ rpm an make a desktop icon and on the icons properties select to run as different user root. http://xdiskusage.sourceforge.net/ nev Neil R Porter wrote: Hi All Might sound like a trivial question (and most prob is!)... but if on windows I want to know how big each partition is and how much space i have left and have used etc it's easy... how can I do this in linux... I installed LM8.1 and took the default partitioning (if memory serves it was a bit for swap and about 3GB for home and 15GB for the rest - 20GB hd)... I can see my file system fine.. but I want to know where I can store big files and when I am running out of space etc ... ta Neil - --- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- -- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
I too am used to the tools of windows and have found that xdiskusage useful in linux as it shows disk usage in a graph for a selected partition. You'll need to install egcs-c++ rpm as well and you'll need to run it as root. You can use the binary at this location just change the permissions to execute, install egcs-c++ rpm an make a desktop icon and on the icons properties select to run as different user root. http://xdiskusage.sourceforge.net/ nev Neil R Porter wrote: Hi All Might sound like a trivial question (and most prob is!)... but if on windows I want to know how big each partition is and how much space i have left and have used etc it's easy... how can I do this in linux... I installed LM8.1 and took the default partitioning (if memory serves it was a bit for swap and about 3GB for home and 15GB for the rest - 20GB hd)... I can see my file system fine.. but I want to know where I can store big files and when I am running out of space etc ... ta Neil Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Hi All Might sound like a trivial question (and most prob is!)... but if on windows I want to know how big each partition is and how much space i have left and have used etc it's easy... how can I do this in linux... I installed LM8.1 and took the default partitioning (if memory serves it was a bit for swap and about 3GB for home and 15GB for the rest - 20GB hd)... I can see my file system fine.. but I want to know where I can store big files and when I am running out of space etc ... ta Neil Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
do a 'df -h' which will tell you how large each partition is, how much you've used, how much is available for use, and what percent of the partition is being used. If any % is higher than about 75-80%, it's usually time to take a look to see where you can free up some room. Michael -- Michael Viron Registered Linux User #81978 Senior Systems Administration Consultant Web Spinners, University of West Florida At 10:34 AM 11/28/2001 -, Neil R Porter wrote: Hi All Might sound like a trivial question (and most prob is!)... but if on windows I want to know how big each partition is and how much space i have left and have used etc it's easy... how can I do this in linux... I installed LM8.1 and took the default partitioning (if memory serves it was a bit for swap and about 3GB for home and 15GB for the rest - 20GB hd)... I can see my file system fine.. but I want to know where I can store big files and when I am running out of space etc ... ta Neil Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Michael, et al: Just a tidbit of info (as in - suggestion), that I follow all the time. When installing Mandrake (for a workstation or stand-alone PC), on a large drive, I'd like to suggest that you break your /home partition into 2 partitions. Typically, DiskDrake will setup 3 partitions (ie; / , swap, and /home), but I suggest a fourth partition which can be used as an archive (read as storage) partition. I use it for ALL downloads, documents, RPM updates, and extra programs (ie; Gnapster, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Newer Mozilla builds, Java Runtime Environments, and Openoffice). That way, even if I decide to wipe the other three partitions and do a full install, all my extra programs and packages are still intact and ready to be re-installed. Then it's just a matter of telling my word-processor where to find My Documents on the /archive partition, and putting a shortcut on the desktop for everything I regularly use. As a matter of fact, once your desktop is fully configured the way you want it, you can also copy your /home/user folder over to the /archive partition as a backup copy. Whenever Mandrake releases a new version, I like to erase everything in /home as well as /, and swap partitions, and start fresh. But by saving the important stuff on the /archive partition, I save a lot of download time. Then all that I need to do is to update the files every once in a while. It also speeds up Mandrake Update since the RPM's , and description list is already on the hard drive. Just my 25 cents ! Lanman On Wednesday 28 November 2001 09:21 am, you wrote: do a 'df -h' which will tell you how large each partition is, how much you've used, how much is available for use, and what percent of the partition is being used. If any % is higher than about 75-80%, it's usually time to take a look to see where you can free up some room. Michael Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Thanks to all who replied.. I only knew about du.. So df and kwikdisk were nice to find out about! -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ronald J. Hall Sent: 28 November 2001 14:07 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD? Neil R Porter wrote: Hi All Might sound like a trivial question (and most prob is!)... but if on windows I want to know how big each partition is and how much space i have left and have used etc it's easy... how can I do this in linux... I installed LM8.1 and took the default partitioning (if memory serves it was a bit for swap and about 3GB for home and 15GB for the rest - 20GB hd)... I can see my file system fine.. but I want to know where I can store big files and when I am running out of space etc ... ta Neil Hi Neil. No problem just do a du or df on the partition in question. For further use of these two commands, do a man du or man df. BTW, if you are using KDE, just right-clicking on a folder, and picking properties will calculate the size... -- /\ DarkLord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] How to find Space on HD?
Hey Michael; Actually, I meant to send the email to the person to whom you were responding as well. Nice to see I'm not the only Common Sense person here! I imagine that most folks on the list are! After all, Linux is based on common sense (amongst other things) . Lanman On Wednesday 28 November 2001 10:55 am, you wrote: Lanman, Something that I already do. On the last system I set up, there are 3 hard drives, each of which has a specific use. Our 6.4 GB hda is used as the system drive (/, /usr, /tmp, /var, and swap), 20 GB hdb is used as /home, and 20 GB hdd is used as /backup. hdd and hdb are both using reiserfs, as we have 'intermittent' power outages which normally last longer than our UPS is rated for (at about 15-20 minutes). FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda1 486M 64M 397M 14% / /dev/hdd1 19G 2.6G 16G 14% /backup /dev/hdb1 19G 919M 18G 5% /home /dev/hda81003M 32k 952M 0% /tmp /dev/hda6 2.9G 1.9G 814M 71% /usr /dev/hda5 1.4G 159M 1.2G 11% /var Michael Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
