There are no hard drives in this computer, which has an 8 gig drive in the computer (Dell Netbook)and a 16 gig SDHC card. Ubuntu linux is on the 8 gig drive with 2.5 gigs remaining free space and 14 gigs free on the SDHC card. Is there a way of loading, or transferring programs to the SDHC card to keep the free space on the 8 gig drive at a reasonable level?

I've transferred several of my windows programs to the 16 gig card and use them successfully with Wine.

Copy the contents of /usr to the SDHC card, remove everything under /usr, then mount the SDHC card to /usr

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Many thanks for the reply. One problem: I don't understand what "mount the SDHC card to /usr" means.

Bob

You said you wanted your programs on the SDHC card. (Where is /home by the way?) When the SDHC card is plugged in, you should have some sort of /dev/sd* entry for it. In your fstab, mount that over /usr.

What did do not understands what mount means ?
Or how to make a mount command ?
Linux file can be on several drives .
If you like the system to make use of it you have to mount the file system
Normally it is done /etc/fstab
So you have to edit you're fstab to add the command

A few months ago I plugged in the 16 gig SDHC card in the slot on the side of the computer and gave it the name "storage". It now shows up as a drive. I can easily copy the contents of /usr on the main drive ("file system") to "storage" and then remove all the contents of /usr from the main drive. At that point how do I get linux to recognize that /usr contents are now on the SDHC card? I looked at the fstab file and it contains:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=9a8d25ae-58c8-42d8-9a00-b85dc3a37690 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=ceb28819-ea89-4136-ac98-68e23208a26b none swap sw 0 0

How should I modify it?

In answer to an above question: /home is on my main drive.

Really appreciate your taking time to answer my questions.

Bob

Ugh, you need a lot of info. Before we go any further though, you should know that those SDHC cards are really slow, putting /usr on it might really hurt your performance. Can you show me the output of:

and

This may be a whole new kettle of fish. Slow I don't want, though I do have 4 windows programs on the SDHC card and see no decrease in speed. It might be interesting to put the windows version of Filezilla on the card and compare it with the linux version on the main drive.

Lets leave it this way. If you feel you must spend more than a few minutes solving this problem, lets call it off. The system is working fine and may continue doing so until I decide to go to a new version of linux, at which time it might be well to install it on the SDHC card and see what happens. Another possibility is to add another 8 gig to the computer, though I have been told that could be rather expensive. Many thanks for your time.

Bob

Results from using the code you suggested.

bob@DellVostro:~$ mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/bob/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=bob)
/dev/mmcblk0p1 on /media/Storage type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,flush)


bob@DellVostro:~$ sudo du -sh /*
[sudo] password for bob:
6.5M /bin
33M /boot
4.0K /cdrom
1.5M /dev
14M /etc
du: cannot access `/home/bob/.gvfs': Permission denied
556M /home
0 /initrd.img
0 /initrd.img.old
226M /lib
16K /lost+found
241M /media
4.0K /mnt
4.0K /opt
du: cannot access `/proc/1848/task/1848/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/1848/task/1848/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/1848/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/1848/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
0 /proc
236K /root
7.4M /sbin
4.0K /selinux
4.0K /srv
0 /sys
56K /tmp
2.3G /usr
672M /var
0 /vmlinuz
0 /vmlinuz.old

Well, for starters you would need to reformat the SDHC card, it's currently formatted as FAT. I'm pretty sure the root partition has to be ext# (ext4). It's really your read speeds that are going to matter, you could create a large file on the main drive and on Storage and see how long it takes to read it.

If you decide to move forward, you will need to:

1) Backup "Storage"

2) Run mkfs.ext4 on the SDHC (probably giving it a new name in the process)

3) mv /usr to the SDHC

4) Decide whether you'd want to use this SDHC card for anything other than /usr, I'll assume you will

5) Edit /etc/fstab to mount the SDHC to /media/...

6) Edit /etc/fstab to bind mount /media/... to /usr

7) Enjoy

I'll help you with exact details if you want to go forward.

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Good evening Meson?,

After careful consideration, especially the fact that my system is working quite well in its current configuration, I have decided to archive your information and continue studying the ubuntu system to gain a better understanding of how it works. I really like linux and have switched everything over from windows except for Netflix. My big project is being webmaster of our historical society and that work is running very well on linux. Many thanks for your help.

Bob

You have a couple of options to get Netflix on Linux.

1) You can set up a virtual machine with virtualbox. (I know this one will work).

2) You can try using the version if IE in wine. (I don't know about this one).

3) You can try getting the useragent switcher for Firefox and trick Netflix into thinking you have IE (I don't know if this will work).

Thanks for the additional information. I downloaded a copy of the virtual box manual. Space may be a problem, but that remains to be seen. I was told by a Netflix employee that they are working on the problem. I suspect Netflix has a lot of more important problems to address.