Dual boot puzzle

mirroroptic · 08-01-2015, 12:53 PM

Good day to everyone,
I set up Zorin Core 9 along side win XP on my wife's computer. She doesn't chew up a lot of space on her drive so splitting her 160 gb drive seemed adequate. Zorin was given a little more room. She used it for about 10 days during which some updates arrived. What freaked us out was when a message came saying there was only 720 mb of free space left for Zorin. WHAT happened and how do I fix it ?
Thanks,

Alan ....Let me guess - Get a bigger hard drive

yancek · 08-01-2015, 01:13 PM

Left on the system partition or the boot partition? Post some details, run the command from a terminal: df -h
post the output which should show more information. A base install of Zorin will be less than 10GB so I'm not sure what's happening.

Also post the drive/partition info with the command: sudo fdisk -l(Lower Case Letter L in the command)

mirroroptic · 08-01-2015, 06:35 PM

Since we're new at this we were unable to find the command line. This is annoying because there is PLENTY of room in the menu where they could put "Command line" and I could click on it. Things don't have to be so hidden.

astrogeek · 08-01-2015, 06:42 PM

You should find one or more options for Terminal, Shell, Xterm, Vterm, etc... any of those will get you a terminal (i.e. command line).

From your image I would guess that /dev/sda7 must be your root directory, leaving /dev/sda5 as likely candidate for /home... maybe? If so, your root directory is severely cramped.

Post the output of commands listed above plus this...

Code:

cat /etc/fstab

yancek · 08-01-2015, 10:30 PM

Click on the menu, the Z icon, click on Administration then terminal.

mirroroptic · 08-02-2015, 06:34 PM

I give up. I'm never going to dual boot a drive again.

astrogeek · 08-02-2015, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mirroroptic

I give up. I'm never going to dual boot a drive again.

No need to give up - you have the space, we just need to see why the root partition is being squeezed and try to give it some breathing room in or from the other Linux partition.

Don't be discouraged - part of the learning process!

mirroroptic · 08-02-2015, 09:26 PM

Ah yes the learning process. Well I learned some GWBASIC, DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows98 and XP. Now all of a sudden I'm an old man running out of time. How many years did I lose doing all that ? On a time versus enjoyment basis, time was high - I'll call that 8 and enjoyment (or convenience) would get a 3. I'm going to buy a hard drive switch or try Robolinux

astrogeek · 08-02-2015, 09:29 PM

HAHA! Yea, as one old guy to another then, best of luck whatever you do, and long life!

mirroroptic · 08-03-2015, 12:53 AM

Astrogeek, You're a decent guy. There was something important I forgot (been really busy).... The wife's computer had XP and Linux Mint on it. Couldn't get her printer to work in Mint plus a few other things so I tried to wipe the partition and install Zorin. That's probably why the drive got all screwed up. I used parted magic. It doesn't say, Hey what would you like to do today ? Got a problem bunky ? Let me fix your drive. You've got a real mess here ... why don't we clean it up ? Which OSs do you want to use ? Answer - Zorin and XP. Hold on to your hat. This will only take a minute - Go have a sandwich and then reboot :-)) Cheers