How to recover from filled up root partition
I''m running SuSE 9.1 and just had a big problem arise. My root partition just filled up and now things are getting real dicey. Konqueror cannot start and other programs are getting flakey, too. The obvious solution is to use some of the unused space on another partition. My question is which is the best way to do that? My root partition, hda6, is 1GB small while the unused partition is hda10 and is 4GB big. Root contains, among other things, /bin , /sbin , /tmp , and /root. I first thought of copying all of root to a dvd and then redoing the drives but that is a lot of iffy stuff for me as I'm not real confident the dvd writing program is doing things correctly. Can I simply move all of / to /srv, which is the unused directory, then rename them in fstab? Or can I simply make a link to the unused directory and move some stuff over there? Or can I use something like parted or PQ Magic to resize the partitions without losing data? I dont believe I can do such a thing across non-contiguous partitions. It appears I will have to use a rescue disk of some sort to do any transfers. Any suggestions are welcome, including RTFM, if you can tell me where the M is. TIA, Richard
On Saturday 18 December 2004 9:23 pm, Richard Atcheson wrote:
I''m running SuSE 9.1 and just had a big problem arise. My root partition just filled up and now things are getting real dicey. Konqueror cannot start and other programs are getting flakey, too.
The obvious solution is to use some of the unused space on another partition. My question is which is the best way to do that?
My root partition, hda6, is 1GB small while the unused partition is hda10 and is 4GB big. Root contains, among other things, /bin , /sbin , /tmp , Get to a console (Ctrl+Alt+F1), login as root, init 3 to stop X, delete all of /tmp, (init 5 if you need the GUI back) and that should give you some breathing room. Then you can at least have a usable system to re-partition, expand partitions, move directories to partitions with more room, etc. There shouldn't be anything in /tmp that can't be recreated on the fly.
and /root. I first thought of copying all of root to a dvd and then redoing the drives but that is a lot of iffy stuff for me as I'm not real confident the dvd writing program is doing things correctly. Can I simply move all of / to /srv, which is the unused directory, then rename them in fstab? Or can I simply make a link to the unused directory and move some stuff over there? Or can I use something like parted or PQ Magic to resize the partitions without losing data? I dont believe I can do such a thing across non-contiguous partitions.
It appears I will have to use a rescue disk of some sort to do any transfers.
Any suggestions are welcome, including RTFM, if you can tell me where the M is.
TIA, Richard
How large is the drive and how much free space do you actually have to play with here? Maybe if you gave us all the details of all the partition sizes and what is on each partition we could help with re-allocating space. Stan
On Saturday 18 December 2004 10:07 pm, Stan Glasoe wrote:
My root partition, hda6, is 1GB small while the unused partition is hda10 and is 4GB big. Root contains, among other things, /bin , /sbin , /tmp ,
Get to a console (Ctrl+Alt+F1), login as root, init 3 to stop X, delete all of /tmp, (init 5 if you need the GUI back) and that should give you some breathing room. Then you can at least have a usable system to re-partition, expand partitions, move directories to partitions with more room, etc. There shouldn't be anything in /tmp that can't be recreated on the fly.
Thanks Stan, I had overlooked that little bit in my panic. That gave me back some 850 megs so my root size is ok if I merely move the /tmp to another partition.
How large is the drive and how much free space do you actually have to play with here? Maybe if you gave us all the details of all the partition sizes and what is on each partition we could help with re-allocating space.
I have two drives. hda is broken up into a dozen partitions including a couple of fat types for the other OS. I have one partition, /srv, of 4 GB which is virtually unused. Obviously my mistake in laying out them originally was to not create a separate one for tmp. Of course, that doesn't answer the question of why the tmp gets so large. Guess I need to look into cleaning out tmp periodically. On boot is not a good option cause I rarely reboot this machine. I think what I should do is make my /srv partition into /tmp then It can get much bigger before it becomes a problem and at least running out of tmp wont be a real show stopper. Can I simply go into fstab and change /dev/hda10 /srv . . . to /dev/hda10 /tmp . . . or do I need to do some other finger magic to make that change? Any other suggestions are welcome. Thanks again for the help. Richard
Stan
-- Old age ain't for Sissies!
The Sunday 2004-12-19 at 10:54 -0600, Richard wrote:
Of course, that doesn't answer the question of why the tmp gets so large. Guess I need to look into cleaning out tmp periodically. On boot is not a good option cause I rarely reboot this machine.
There is a script in cron.daily that does it. Probably suse.de-clean-tmp. There are variables there that can be set in /etc/sysconfig.
Can I simply go into fstab and change /dev/hda10 /srv . . . to /dev/hda10 /tmp . . .
or do I need to do some other finger magic to make that change?
Mostly, yes. They have to be umounted at the time of change, of course. The howto I posted the other day coments it all. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
The Sunday 2004-12-19 at 10:54 -0600, Richard wrote:
Of course, that doesn't answer the question of why the tmp gets so large. Guess I need to look into cleaning out tmp periodically. On boot is not a good option cause I rarely reboot this machine.
There is a script in cron.daily that does it. Probably suse.de-clean-tmp. There are variables there that can be set in /etc/sysconfig.
Can I simply go into fstab and change /dev/hda10 /srv . . . to /dev/hda10 /tmp . . .
or do I need to do some other finger magic to make that change?
Mostly, yes. They have to be umounted at the time of change, of course. The howto I posted the other day coments it all.
-- Cheers, Carlos Robinson Thanks Carlos, that solved my problem. Also I discovered yesterday that crap left in the /tmp folder can cause some strange Kmail problems, too. My wifes machine wouldnt send cued messages and it listed a whole bunch of crap, some 40+ unsent messages. So I looked at the outgoing cur
On Friday 24 December 2004 02:54 pm, Carlos E. R. wrote: directory but it only had 5 messages, very strange. On a whim I deleted the /tmp dir. and darned if that didnt clear up the problem. I'm gonna do the cron thing to clean out the /tmp dir periodically. Thanks again, and have a feliz navidad y prospero ano nuevo. Richard -- Old age ain't for Sissies!
The Saturday 2004-12-18 at 21:23 -0600, Richard Atcheson wrote:
The obvious solution is to use some of the unused space on another partition. My question is which is the best way to do that?
/usr/share/doc/howto/en/txt/Hard-Disk-Upgrade.gz I just burnt three finger-tips, I can't type anything much longer. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
On Sunday 19 December 2004 12:29 pm, Carlos E. R. wrote:
The Saturday 2004-12-18 at 21:23 -0600, Richard Atcheson wrote:
The obvious solution is to use some of the unused space on another partition. My question is which is the best way to do that?
/usr/share/doc/howto/en/txt/Hard-Disk-Upgrade.gz
I just burnt three finger-tips, I can't type anything much longer.
-- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
Thanks Carlos, I appreciate your sacrifice on my behalf. I took the brave route and changed my fstab to let my hda10 be /tmp and so far it seems to be doing fine. I'm amazed that linux is almost as intelligent as OS2 was when you changed the location of a file or directory. Both work like real computers! One of the things about OS2 that impressed me was the abitlity to move a file or folder and all links were modified automatically. Anyway, looks like this problem is solved. Now to get the sound working on my new motherboard. Richard -- Old age ain't for Sissies!
The Monday 2004-12-20 at 02:36 -0600, Richard wrote:
/usr/share/doc/howto/en/txt/Hard-Disk-Upgrade.gz
I just burnt three finger-tips, I can't type anything much longer.
Thanks Carlos, I appreciate your sacrifice on my behalf.
Not that much "sacrifice". X-) I simply burnt my fingertips (three of them) with an overheated coffee-maker, and the small bandages forced me to type one-handed.
I took the brave route and changed my fstab to let my hda10 be /tmp and so far it seems to be doing fine. I'm amazed that linux is almost as intelligent as OS2 was when you changed the location of a file or directory. Both work like real computers! One of the things about OS2 that impressed me was the abitlity to move a file or folder and all links were modified automatically.
Yes, the filesystem in linux is independent of where physically a directory really is. And they can be changed. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
participants (4)
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Carlos E. R. -
Richard -
Richard Atcheson
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Stan Glasoe