Hi I am building a very basic version of Gentoo on quite a resource limited system. In any case all it has on it is X, Mplayer, Mplayer Codecs, a Samba Server, xmms, a FPT Server and not an awful lot else. However it was built from a preconfigured version of gentoo - which pretty much had everything under the sun you could ever possibly need crammed into it. However despite this when installing apps, I am still getting constant complaints about the system 'running out of space.' I have about 4GB to work with (it is essentially a solid state type system - with no internal hard disk or other moving parts). So I am curious as to what on earth could be taking up all that space?

Does portage keep a local cache of packages that are (or were) installed somewhere like Debian does? If so this is not required as I have a very fast connection (about 24Mbs) so downloading any required packages again is not an issue.

If there is a cache somewhere, can I safely delete it - and possibly tell the system not to store a local cache again in the future?

GJ

There's a couple of ways to approach this. The slower way is to run du -sh /* to see what each top level directory is holding. If, for example, /var showed with high usage, you'd then run du -sh /var/* and so on until you found the files you were looking for.

It's faster to use find if you suspect that large files are the culprit. For example, find / -type f -size +10M 2>/dev/null will list all of the files over 10MB in size.

Thanks... well there is a cache. I found it in /user/portage - 696MB to be exact. It doesn't explain everything - but it is a significant chunk. I'm not sure what the effects will be of deleting it - but I guess I'm going to find out.

As for the rest, I'll take your advice and see what i uncover.

Best regards,

GJ

I'd suggest some time spent on forums.gentoo.org would be worthwhile. There are a truckload of threads like this. Being a source-based distro, you are going to have some big directories - some of which can be emptied. Doing so may impact subsequent emerges if the download has to be redone.
Trade-offs, always trade-offs ...

The Gentoo forums are unusable ATM and have been for the last few days. they have never been very reliable - but over the last couple of days it has been virtually impossible to browse them.

Anyway, the bottom line is that it isn't a good idea to delete /usr/portage - as to my cost I have found out that this totally kills portage.

Now it seems I must redo the entire install again.

GJ

you shouldnt need to do a complete resintall, you should be able rebuild your portage tree using approximately the same method in the gentoo handbook. the tree resides in /usr/portage, so it should be a simple matter of getting a new copy and extracting it.

this would have to adapt to your system obvioiusly, so dont blame me if this breaks things. you could also extact the files to a temp directory and then cp -R the files from ./portage into /usr/portage (or whatever).

you may even be able to get away with running 'emerge sync' to syncronize your tree back up. infact i would TRY THIS FIRST.

you may want to try 'eclean-dist' and 'eclean-pkg' (part of gentoolkit i think.) to clean out 'junk' from the tree. you can also do 'emerge --depclean', but use this with care, you can remove used packages iwth it (after doing a depclean, you should run 'revdep-rebuild' immediately.)

there was also a script that did some auto-cleaning for you written by a gentoo forum user, but i cant find the script at the momment.

Thanks man, that fixed it. (Although now /user/portage is still taking up tons of space). I don't see though why /user/portage can't just comntain a text file that is synced against a phyical mirror. It seems wasteful to have the entire cache stored locally - particularly in instances where either this isn't required - or as in my case it simply isn't practical.

GJ

Does it have to be gentoo ???. Arch is an i686 binary distro that might do the job for you. Minimal install doesn't even have X - you install what you want, just like a (normal) gentoo build.

Edit: Don't understand your trouble with the gentoo fora - I've had no trouble for ages. Maybe you have a bad link somewhere.

I don't really have time to learn a new distro, thanks.

And what is a 'bad link'?

I have never hear of anything like that before.

The gentoo forums are the gentoo forums, right? I've been using them on and off for 5 years. How can the gentoo forum address be a bad link?

GJ

I meant "hop" - i.e. a bad (physical) link in you getting from your PC to where-ever the fora are hosted..
I used to have all sorts of trouble with their download mirrors until I switched to a local one. I've never had the same trouble with their fora, but you never know ...

No, nothing like that. It isn't about 'mirrors'. The forum isn't hosted on a mirror. Also i can browse anywhere else without difficulty.

GJ