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05-14-2006, 05:01 PM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 393
Rep:
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Major Space Issues on Gentoo!
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
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05-14-2006, 05:31 PM
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#2
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Senior Member
Registered: Dec 2005
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Distribution: Slackware64 14.0
Posts: 4,141
Rep: 
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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.
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05-14-2006, 06:29 PM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 393
Original Poster
Rep:
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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
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05-14-2006, 06:57 PM
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#4
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,385
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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 ...
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05-14-2006, 07:44 PM
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#5
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Member
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 393
Original Poster
Rep:
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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
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05-14-2006, 08:39 PM
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#6
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Member
Registered: Apr 2004
Distribution: Gentoo, RHL, CentOS, Ubuntu, FreeBSD,
Posts: 88
Rep:
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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.
Code:
cd /
wget http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo/snapshots/portage-latest.tar.bz2
tar xvjf /portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /usr
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.
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05-14-2006, 08:48 PM
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#7
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Member
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 393
Original Poster
Rep:
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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
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05-14-2006, 09:14 PM
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#8
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,385
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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.
Last edited by syg00; 05-14-2006 at 09:25 PM.
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05-15-2006, 01:50 AM
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#9
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Member
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 393
Original Poster
Rep:
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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
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05-15-2006, 02:26 AM
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#10
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,385
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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 ...
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05-15-2006, 03:39 AM
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#11
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Member
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 393
Original Poster
Rep:
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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
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