Out Of Disk Space

carlosinfl · 05-23-2007, 12:21 PM

I am not sure what the proper section this issue falls under so I decided this would be a safe bet.

Anyways - my server is having a problem which is due to my poor planning / partitioning. I am to blame here however I want to know if there is a simple solution to fixing this problem or what would you do.

This server running CENTOS 4.4 was unable to update / upgrade do to the simple fact that I have ran completely out of room on /usr & /var. Those are very critical directories to have low on disk space and I am freaking out now.

Here is how the disk looks.

Code:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2             388M  219M  149M  60% /
/dev/sda1             244M   23M  209M  10% /boot
none                  506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda5             2.0G   36M  1.9G   2% /home
/dev/sda6            1012M  691M  270M  72% /usr
/dev/sda7             487M  392M   70M  85% /var
/dev/sda8             909G   56G  807G   7% /data

I was wondering if I could rob like 20 or 40 GB from /data (/dev/sdb8) and move or add it to /var & /usr?

If anyone knows a simple or logical way of resolving this error, please let me know. My Linux skills are average so if you have complex or detailed suggestions, please bare with me on how to execute them properly.

Thanks!

Okie · 05-23-2007, 12:34 PM

looks like /var is getting pretty full, i bet there are some log files that need cleaned out of /var/log...

also i dont know where CeNTOS keeps packages after installing updates but they could be clogging up var, look in the subdirectories in /var for a bunch of RPMs and don't delete them just in case you need to re-install them, just move them somewhere else, lots of room in /data and /home or burn them to CDR, then once you have them backed up you can delete them to recover disk space...

Hern_28 · 05-23-2007, 12:34 PM

Could you move the /usr and /var (copying entire directories and all) to the large partition (sda8) and change their location in fstab. I must be missing something it couldn't be that easy hehhe. worth a try though. Only reason i suggest that is because i hate taking anymore chances with gparted when repartitioning than I have to.

carlosinfl · 05-23-2007, 01:21 PM

I guess someone suggested to reboot the machine and boot from a Live CD so the partitions are not mounted and then use tar or cpio to move all the contents from /var & /usr to /data and then recreate the partitions as large as I want and edit etc/fstab.

Quakeboy02 · 05-23-2007, 01:32 PM

Quote:

I guess someone suggested to reboot the machine and boot from a Live CD so the partitions are not mounted and then use tar or cpio to move all the contents from /var & /usr to /data and then recreate the partitions as large as I want and edit etc/fstab.

Yeah, pretty much. Chopping a drive up like you did is just asking for trouble. You need a "/", and you need a "/data" (or whatever you choose to call /data). All the rest can be on "/". Optionally make a "/home" of a few GB, depending on what you *realistically* expect to want to keep in "/home". I don't bother with a separate "/home". I keep very little in it, and back it up periodically to CDROM.

You will probably have to do surgery on grub, as well.