"Live" Update - SuSE10.3 -> 11.0 - disk space
 

Hello,

Last weekend, I upgraded my 10 year-old PC from SuSE 10.3 to 11.0, using an "unsupported" method (the reason I did so was because of video display issues, but that is in another thread)...

The method that I used to perform the upgrade can be found here:
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/bweber/en..._opensuse_103/

The size of the disk that contains the root, boot, var, etc is approximately 10gig. Prior to upgrading, I was using close to 6 gig. After updating, I am using around 9 gig. What appears to have happened is either all of the 10.3 distribution is somewhere on the drive, or all of the files that I downloaded during the upgrade are still residing on the drive.

I cannot find anything out of the ordinary -- the first thing that I checked was for huge log files, but they seem reasonably sized. The second was to search for all files greater than, say, 100 megabytes. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I do not know if this unsupported "method" doesn't perform "housecleaning", or if this is normal after an upgrade. Does anyone have any thoughts as to what to look for in reducing the amount of disk space used as a result(?) of the upgrade?

I also tried this method on a VM on my work laptop, and am having a similar issue on that.

Thanks

A possibility -- not checked so this could be total "Bovine Scatology" is that you've added lots of online repositories so you've got both the old update / repository data from 10.3 and the new 11.0 stuff.

This stuff is stored somewhere on the target computer as it's referred to when updating or installing software via YAST.

Check also you haven't downloaded or installed source code of everything.

In general you are better off doing a complete install rather than an upgrade. Old Video cards will certainly run in generic VGA mode at least (640 X 480) no matter how old the card is so you'll be able to install the system without any problems.

In fact with a vey old video card you'll probably find loads of "generic" drivers out there that will give max resolution for your video card and monitor -- otherwise you can get a really old legacy old PCI video card these days for around 10 USD. Advantage here of spending the 10 dollars is you'll get a disk and be able to source a driver for the card.


The new video cards are ususally PCI EXPRESS. The slightly older format used AGP slots but these are rarer now --PCI EXPRESS is supported on modern motherboards.

Judging by what you have posted about your hardware only the old PCI cards will work for you.

Cheers

-K

Hi Kyle,

Thank you for your response. I do not have repositories for both 10.3 & 11.0. But, as I mentioned, I wouldn't be surprised if the files that were downloaded using this "runtime" upgrade method are still (somewhere) on the drive, or backup copies of the 10.3 files are sitting out there somewhere.

What I've noticed looking at the 11.0 "detailed" boot mode (pressing ESC) on other machines is it no longer uses a plain old black screen with text -- it appears to be a black screen with small white dots (more of a "GUI" black screen), hence this may be part of the problem with the older video card.

I seem to recall the machine having a first-generation AGP card slot -- I will need to crack it open again to verify. I also agree that plain old 620x480 mode SHOULD work -- but it doesn't...

I'll keep you posted if I find the culprit of the disk space or resolve the video issue.

I finally had a little time (and much ambition) to do some digging on this issue.

And sure enough, I found what I think is the main culprit.

/var/cache/zypp/raw contained a few left-over 10.3 items, but didn't amount to much.

That said, there are 3 directories (each with 2 subdirectories -- i586 & noarch)listed under /var/cache/zypp/packages

openSUSE110
openSUSE110_NonFree
packman

Outside of the 2 subdirectories, the last 2 entries are empty.

The first one, however (openSUSE110) looks like it contains every RPM that was installed. They all have the date of June 28 (when I did the upgrade), and is taking up a total of 1.4G

Granted, this only accounts for part of my "missing" disk space, but it is a good sized chunk.

Is it safe to remove these 3 directories?

Thanks