hello,

i am running out of diskspace on / and need to resize it. is there any way to do this directly (without relying on some kind of restore or install cd)? is it possible to do this by booting into single user mode and doing some tricks to unmount the root partition? i've tried this, but it won't seem to let me unmount / (because it is in use). thanks.

mike

Try resizing your / partition with a Live CD like Knoppix or Ubuntu.

... or maybe the GPartEd LiveCD.

OTOH, maybe you can just figure out a bunch of files to delete.

Do these LiveCDs also resize the file system?

i know the gparted cd will work. i've used it before.

like i said, i would prefer to not have to use a live cd to do this if it is possible. i would like to know how to do it easily in the future (rather than digging thru a stack of cds).

thanks.

mike

The easy way is a Live CD. Don't be ashamed, the pro's use them also as it saves them valuable time (downtime costs money, if it's a large server it'll cost big bucks...) As said, you may win a few MB's by removing orphaned directories (i.e. programs you've removed but the dir's and it's contents remain)

You can try removing some packages. I got about 3 GB on / back last time I did that.

You can add an additional drive or partition then move a directory from under root to a new mount point.. something like /usr or /var maybe..

anyone know how to list packages by file size? so i can figure out which ones will be the best to remove?

thanks.

I suggest bookmarking this page: http://www.ss64.com/bash/ Use it as a quick reference on which command you need, then read the man-page of that command for it's options and/or syntax

In this case, try du -h Warning! This will cause your terminal to fill up very quickly! Redirect it to a file, like this: du -h > diskusage.txt Better to sort this mess straight away: Read the resulting file "sortedfile.txt" with your favorite editor.

You've just witnessed the incredible power of the commandline! Be warned though: if you invoke this command and it encounters a file/directory it doesn't have sufficient rights for, you'll get a lot of errors! (i.e: don't invoke this command as a normal user when outside that user's home-dir )

<edit> I've just realised you've asked explicitely for installed packages, not so much large files as such. Then read the man page for the apt-cache command</edit>

fyi, i found this slick shell wizardry [1] that lists all packages in order of file size

i found nothing large that i really want to remove, so i will go ahead with using the live cd to resize.

thanks for all the help!

mike

[1] http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/packaging.html

note also that the fslint package will allow you to search your system for packages...and as a bonus will sort by size automatically.

it also looks like it has some other cool capabilities.

mike